diff --git a/doc/src/Errors_details.rst b/doc/src/Errors_details.rst index 4b510f4902..c5fc1355a5 100644 --- a/doc/src/Errors_details.rst +++ b/doc/src/Errors_details.rst @@ -51,8 +51,11 @@ Parallel versus serial ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Issues where something is "lost" or "missing" often exhibit that issue -only when running in parallel. That doesn't mean there is no problem, -only the symptoms are not triggering an error quickly. Correspondingly, +*only* when running in parallel. That doesn't mean there is no problem +when running in serial, only the symptoms are not triggering an error. +This may be because there is no domain decomposition with just one +processor and thus all atoms are accessible, or it may be because the +problem will manifest faster with smaller subdomains. Correspondingly, errors may be triggered faster with more processors and thus smaller sub-domains. @@ -244,6 +247,25 @@ equal style (or similar) variables can only be expanded before the box is defined if they do not reference anything that cannot be defined before the box (e.g. a compute or fix reference or a thermo keyword). +.. _hint13: + +Illegal ... command +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + +These are a catchall error messages that used to be used a lot in LAMMPS +(also programmers are sometimes lazy). They usually include the name of +the source file and the line where the error happened. This can be used +to track down what caused the error (most often some form of syntax error) +by looking at the source code. However, this has two disadvantages: 1. one +has to check the source file from the exact same LAMMPS version, or else +the line number would be different or the core may have been rewritten and +that specific error does not exist anymore. + +The LAMMPS developers are committed to replace these too generic error +messages with more descriptive errors, e.g. listing *which* keyword was +causing the error, so that it will be much simpler to look up the +correct syntax in the manual (and without referring to the source code). + ------ .. _err0001: