scverse / scverse/anndata

Give better errors when writing illegal column names

Open
#321 8 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
773
Forks
209
Avg merge
19h 41m
Merged PRs (30d)
32

Description

There’s a too generic/unhelpful error when writing DataFrame column names that are

  • numeric

  • 'index'

  • containing slashes (unsure if this is still the case)

  • non-unicode: issue_52_demo.tar.gz

    $ ./demo_load_maggie.py 
    Variable names are not unique. To make them unique, call `.var_names_make_unique`.
    anndata/readwrite/write.py:301: UserWarning: Could not save field with key = "uns/condition_categories" to hdf5 file.
    'to hdf5 file.'.format(key))
    

#52 has more details

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the failure shown at anndata/readwrite/write.py:301 and review issue #52 for the additional reproduction details. Reproduce the write failures for numeric, 'index', slash-containing, and non-Unicode column names, then trace how the generic HDF5 warning is produced. Done means each reported case gives a specific, useful error instead of the generic message.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.