Re: [HTCondor-users] help/warn user if specified value not string wrapped in double quotes

[Michael Pelletier <michael.v.pelletier@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The issue is that while condor_submit is reasonably clever about discerning the data type of various values, because it understands what attribute each key intends to define within the job ClassAd and the target type of that ClassAd, when you use "+" or "MY." prefixes, you are directly specifying the ClassAd attribute, so condor_submit can't sort out the type for you.

For example:

-----
executable = /bin/sleep
arguments = 30

+NodeSet=DEBUG
MY.NodeSetTwo = Normal
-----

When you do this, you're saying that the "NodeSet" job attribute is equal to the "DEBUG" job attribute (case-insensitive but case-preserving), and that NodeSetTwo is equal to the "Normal" job attribute, which is because they're not "string" types in the ClassAd language due to the lack of double quotes around them, and there's nothing condor_submit can do about it.

[pelletm@engcloud-cm1 ~]$ condor_submit subsleep
Submitting job(s).
1 job(s) submitted to cluster 32074.
[pelletm@engcloud-cm1 ~]$ condor_q -long 32074 | grep Node
NodeSet = DEBUG
NodeSetTwo = Normal
[pelletm@engcloud-cm1 ~]$

This may have the appearance of having worked, but if you "-autoformat" them, the parser will look up the "debug" and "normal" attributes respectively, and they'll both come back undefined as you've seen.

Your case looks like the "unparse(NodeSet)" function call would be useful - if the return from that is an empty string AND NodeSet is undefined, then you can set it to "normal," but if unparse() returns a nonempty string even though NodeSet is undefined, then you'd just set the NodeSet attribute to the string which unparse returned.


Michael V. Pelletier
Information Technology
Digital Transformation & Innovation
Integrated Defense Systems
Raytheon Company

From: HTCondor-users <htcondor-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Rundall, Jacob D
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2020 4:24 PM
To: HTCondor-Users Mail List <htcondor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [External] [HTCondor-users] help/warn user if specified value not string wrapped in double quotes

We have a custom Nodeset attribute weâd like to be set for each job. If the user does not specify Nodeset weâd like it to be set to "NORMAL". If the user does specify a Nodeset we'd like it to be set as they specified.

A Job Transform like this comes close to doing what we want:
JOB_TRANSFORM_NAMES = $(JOB_TRANSFORM_NAMES) DEFNODESET
JOB_TRANSFORM_DEFNODESET @=ENDDNS
ÂÂ REQUIREMENTS NODESET IS UNDEFINED
ÂÂ SET NODESET "NORMAL"
@ENDDNS

In particular, if the user does not specify anything, then Nodeset is set to "NORMAL". And if they specify a string in "", it is preserved, e.g.,
$ condor_submit <submit file> -append '+Nodeset="DEBUG"'
This results in Nodeset = "DEBUG" (the job transform is skipped; again, this is desired).

However, if the user attempts to specify Nodeset but passes text w/o using double quotes, it seems to be treated as Undefined and is set to "NORMAL". E.g.,
$ condor_submit <submit file> -append '+Nodeset=DEBUG'
Results in Nodeset = "NORMAL" (the job transform takes effect; this is NOT desired).

In this case, we either want to make HTCondor wrap the non-string in "", e.g., DEBUG becomes "DEBUG", or otherwise we probably want to skip the Job Transform and use a Submit Requirement to catch the non-string and tell the user to try again with "".

Note that we have the additional complication that a Nodeset may be a hostname w/ hyphens, e.g., prj-cluster-sub01. I realize that those hyphens are vastly different if interpreted as minus or unary negation as opposed to the hyphen character in a string.

Is there a way to achieve what we're after: Warn/help the user out if they forget to wrap the Nodeset value in "" ?