[python-package] simplify eval result printing

[jameslamb]

Proposes a small refactor of _format_eval_result(), used to populate log messages like this:

LightGBM/python-package/lightgbm/callback.py

Lines 99 to 100 in 53e0ddf

	result = "\t".join([_format_eval_result(x, self.show_stdv) for x in env.evaluation_result_list])
	_log_info(f"[{env.iteration + 1}]\t{result}")

This is a first step in the broader refactoring proposed in #6748 ... see that issue for more details.

[jmoralez]

What do you think of using similar names to the ones here

LightGBM/python-package/lightgbm/basic.py

Line 5215 in 53e0ddf

ret.append((data_name, eval_name, val, is_higher_better))

I find the first one a bit confusing, since it's the name of the validation set. Maybe something like dataset_name, metric_name, metric_value, *_ = value?

[jameslamb]

You're totally right... I think eval_name and eval_result are confusing. I love your suggested names, agree we should standardize on those (here and in future PRs like this).

[jameslamb]

updated in 6b63377

I'll do more of this renaming in future PRs.

[jmoralez]

We're loosing this error, not sure if it can happen but may be worth adding a check at the start like:

if len(value) not in [4, 5]:
    raise ValueError("Wrong metric value")

[jameslamb]

Honestly, I don't think this is a very helpful error message. "Wrong metric value" doesn't really describe the problem here, and you'll end up walking the stacktrace to find this point in the code anyway.

Originally in this PR, I was thinking we could just keep this simple and let Python's "too many values to unpack" or "not enough values to unpack" tuple-unpacking errors convey that information. But thinking about it more... removing this exception means that you could now implement a custom metric function that returns tuples with more than 5 elements and LightGB would silently accept it. I think it's valuable to continue preventing that, to reserve the 6th, 7th, etc. elements for future LightGBM-internal purposes.

I'll put back an exception here using logic like you suggested... but changing the message to something a bit more helpful.

[jameslamb]

Alright so I tried to add an error message here, and then write a test to check that it's raised... and I couldn't find a public code path that'd allow a tuple with too few or too many tuples to get to this point.

Here's what I tried:

import lightgbm as lgb
from sklearn.datasets import make_regression

X, y = make_regression(n_samples=10_000, n_features=3)

def constant_metric(preds, train_data):
    # returns 4 elements (should be 3)
    return ("error", 0.0, False, "too-much")

dtrain = lgb.Dataset(X, label=y).construct()
dvalid = dtrain.create_valid(X, label=y)

bst = lgb.train(
    params={
        "objective": "regression"
    },
    train_set=dtrain,
    feval=[constant_metric],
    valid_sets=[dvalid],
    valid_names=["valid0"]
)

That gets stopped earlier:

[LightGBM] [Info] Total Bins 765
[LightGBM] [Info] Number of data points in the train set: 10000, number of used features: 3
[LightGBM] [Info] Start training from score -0.471765
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/jlamb/miniforge3/envs/lgb-dev/lib/python3.11/site-packages/lightgbm/engine.py", line 329, in train
    evaluation_result_list.extend(booster.eval_valid(feval))
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/jlamb/miniforge3/envs/lgb-dev/lib/python3.11/site-packages/lightgbm/basic.py", line 4445, in eval_valid
    return [
           ^
  File "/Users/jlamb/miniforge3/envs/lgb-dev/lib/python3.11/site-packages/lightgbm/basic.py", line 4448, in <listcomp>
    for item in self.__inner_eval(self.name_valid_sets[i - 1], i, feval)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/jlamb/miniforge3/envs/lgb-dev/lib/python3.11/site-packages/lightgbm/basic.py", line 5214, in __inner_eval
    eval_name, val, is_higher_better = feval_ret
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ValueError: too many values to unpack (expected 3)

Here:

LightGBM/python-package/lightgbm/basic.py

Lines 5209 to 5215 in b33a12e

	feval_ret = eval_function(self.__inner_predict(data_idx), cur_data)
	if isinstance(feval_ret, list):
	for eval_name, val, is_higher_better in feval_ret:
	ret.append((data_name, eval_name, val, is_higher_better))
	else:
	eval_name, val, is_higher_better = feval_ret
	ret.append((data_name, eval_name, val, is_higher_better))

So I think that maybe this error message we're talking about was effectively unreachable.

And I don't think we should add a custom and slightly more informative error message there in Booster.__inner_eval():

• that code will raise a ValueError if anything other than exactly a 3-item tuple (or list of such tuples) is returned... so no need to add more protection against tuples of other sizes
• that part of the code is already kind of complicated
• that part of the code runs on every iteration, so adding an if len() ..: raise would add a bit of extra overhead to every iteration

[StrikerRUS]

LGTM! Nice refactoring!

[jameslamb]

Thanks! I'll merge this and then continue with #6748 soon.