Julia Symbolics error when taking derivative of a quotient

I’m getting an error, taking derivatives of expressions with quotients, that seems to be coming from Symbolics.jl or maybe SymbolicUtils.jl. It may be related to https://github.com/JuliaSymbolics/Symbolics.jl/issues/1126, but I’m not sure. In any case I’m posting here as there are many downstream users of Symbolics and this is fairly basic functionality.

Here’s an MWE:

using ModelingToolkit

function main()

	@variables t a(t) b(t)
	D = Differential(t)
	q = a / b

	for i in 1:5
		q2 = deepcopy(q)
        q3 = D(q2)
        q4 = expand_derivatives(q3)
        q = deepcopy(q4)
        display(q)
	end
end
main()

and here’s a stacktrace:

ERROR: LoadError: BoundsError: attempt to access 1-element Vector{Any} at index [2]
Stacktrace:
  [1] throw_boundserror(A::Vector{Any}, I::Tuple{Int64})
    @ Base ./essentials.jl:14
  [2] getindex(A::Vector{Any}, i::Int64)
    @ Base ./essentials.jl:904
  [3] expand_derivatives(O::SymbolicUtils.BasicSymbolic{Real}, simplify::Bool; occurrences::SymbolicUtils.BasicSymbolic{Real}) (repeats 4 times)
    @ Symbolics ~/.julia/dev/Symbolics/src/diff.jl:257
  [4] expand_derivatives(O::SymbolicUtils.BasicSymbolic{Real}, simplify::Bool; occurrences::Nothing)
    @ Symbolics ~/.julia/dev/Symbolics/src/diff.jl:257
  [5] expand_derivatives(n::Num, simplify::Bool; occurrences::Nothing)
    @ Symbolics ~/.julia/dev/Symbolics/src/diff.jl:299
  [6] expand_derivatives
    @ ~/.julia/dev/Symbolics/src/diff.jl:298 [inlined]
  [7] expand_derivatives(n::Num)
    @ Symbolics ~/.julia/dev/Symbolics/src/diff.jl:298
  [8] main()
    @ Main ~/ODEParameterEstimationTrash/MWE-new.jl:12
  [9] top-level scope
    @ ~/ODEParameterEstimationTrash/MWE-new.jl:18
 [10] include(fname::String)
    @ Main ./sysimg.jl:38
 [11] top-level scope
    @ REPL[1]:1
in expression starting at /home/orebas/ODEParameterEstimationTrash/MWE-new.jl:18

In case it helps, the package I’m working on didn’t seem to experience this error a few months ago. However, there a couple of related seeming issues in the Symbolics github, some go back to 2022.

I’m using 1.11rc2, on Windows in WSL2. Here’s the output of status --manifest

(@v1.11) pkg> status --manifest
Status `~/.julia/environments/v1.11/Manifest.toml`
  [47edcb42] ADTypes v1.7.1
  [621f4979] AbstractFFTs v1.5.0
  [398f06c4] AbstractLattices v0.3.0
  [1520ce14] AbstractTrees v0.4.5
  [7d9f7c33] Accessors v0.1.37
  [79e6a3ab] Adapt v4.0.4
  [66dad0bd] AliasTables v1.1.3
⌅ [fb37089c] Arblib v0.8.1
  [ec485272] ArnoldiMethod v0.4.0
  [4fba245c] ArrayInterface v7.15.0
  [4c555306] ArrayLayouts v1.10.2
  [aae01518] BandedMatrices v1.7.2
  [91aaffc3] BaryRational v1.1.0
  [e2ed5e7c] Bijections v0.1.7
  [62783981] BitTwiddlingConvenienceFunctions v0.1.6
  [764a87c0] BoundaryValueDiffEq v5.9.1
  [fa961155] CEnum v0.5.0
  [2a0fbf3d] CPUSummary v0.2.6
  [00ebfdb7] CSTParser v3.4.3
  [49dc2e85] Calculus v0.5.1
  [082447d4] ChainRules v1.69.0
  [d360d2e6] ChainRulesCore v1.24.0
  [f51149dc] ChainRulesOverloadGeneration v0.1.4
  [fb6a15b2] CloseOpenIntervals v0.1.13
  [da1fd8a2] CodeTracking v1.3.6
  [861a8166] Combinatorics v1.0.2
  [a80b9123] CommonMark v0.8.12
  [38540f10] CommonSolve v0.2.4
  [bbf7d656] CommonSubexpressions v0.3.0
  [f70d9fcc] CommonWorldInvalidations v1.0.0
  [34da2185] Compat v4.16.0
  [b152e2b5] CompositeTypes v0.1.4
  [a33af91c] CompositionsBase v0.1.2
  [2569d6c7] ConcreteStructs v0.2.3
  [88cd18e8] ConsoleProgressMonitor v0.1.2
  [187b0558] ConstructionBase v1.5.6
  [adafc99b] CpuId v0.3.1
  [a8cc5b0e] Crayons v4.1.1
  [717857b8] DSP v0.7.9
  [9a962f9c] DataAPI v1.16.0
  [864edb3b] DataStructures v0.18.20
  [e2d170a0] DataValueInterfaces v1.0.0
  [bcd4f6db] DelayDiffEq v5.47.4
  [8bb1440f] DelimitedFiles v1.9.1
  [85a47980] Dictionaries v0.4.2
  [2b5f629d] DiffEqBase v6.152.2
  [459566f4] DiffEqCallbacks v3.7.0
  [77a26b50] DiffEqNoiseProcess v5.22.0
  [163ba53b] DiffResults v1.1.0
  [b552c78f] DiffRules v1.15.1
  [0c46a032] DifferentialEquations v7.13.0
  [a0c0ee7d] DifferentiationInterface v0.5.11
  [b4f34e82] Distances v0.10.11
  [31c24e10] Distributions v0.25.110
  [ffbed154] DocStringExtensions v0.9.3
  [5b8099bc] DomainSets v0.7.14
  [fa6b7ba4] DualNumbers v0.6.8
⌅ [7c1d4256] DynamicPolynomials v0.5.7
⌅ [06fc5a27] DynamicQuantities v0.13.2
  [b7d42ee7] Einsum v0.4.1
  [fdbdab4c] ElasticArrays v1.2.12
  [4e289a0a] EnumX v1.0.4
  [f151be2c] EnzymeCore v0.7.8
  [d4d017d3] ExponentialUtilities v1.26.1
  [e2ba6199] ExprTools v0.1.10
⌅ [6b7a57c9] Expronicon v0.8.5
  [7a1cc6ca] FFTW v1.8.0
  [9d29842c] FastAlmostBandedMatrices v0.1.3
  [7034ab61] FastBroadcast v0.3.5
  [9aa1b823] FastClosures v0.3.2
  [29a986be] FastLapackInterface v2.0.4
  [1a297f60] FillArrays v1.11.0
  [64ca27bc] FindFirstFunctions v1.3.0
  [6a86dc24] FiniteDiff v2.23.1
  [1fa38f19] Format v1.3.7
  [f6369f11] ForwardDiff v0.10.36
  [069b7b12] FunctionWrappers v1.1.3
  [77dc65aa] FunctionWrappersWrappers v0.1.3
  [d9f16b24] Functors v0.4.12
  [0c68f7d7] GPUArrays v10.3.0
  [46192b85] GPUArraysCore v0.1.6
  [14197337] GenericLinearAlgebra v0.3.11
  [c145ed77] GenericSchur v0.5.4
  [c27321d9] Glob v1.3.1
  [86223c79] Graphs v1.11.2
  [f213a82b] HomotopyContinuation v2.10.0 `~/.julia/dev/HomotopyContinuation`
  [3e5b6fbb] HostCPUFeatures v0.1.17
  [1baab800] HybridArrays v0.4.16
  [34004b35] HypergeometricFunctions v0.3.23
  [7869d1d1] IRTools v0.4.14
  [615f187c] IfElse v0.1.1
  [313cdc1a] Indexing v1.1.1
  [d25df0c9] Inflate v0.1.5
  [18e54dd8] IntegerMathUtils v0.1.2
  [8197267c] IntervalSets v0.7.10
  [524e6230] IntervalTrees v1.1.0
  [3587e190] InverseFunctions v0.1.15
  [92d709cd] IrrationalConstants v0.2.2
  [c8e1da08] IterTools v1.10.0
  [82899510] IteratorInterfaceExtensions v1.0.0
  [1019f520] JLFzf v0.1.7
  [692b3bcd] JLLWrappers v1.5.0
  [682c06a0] JSON v0.21.4
  [98e50ef6] JuliaFormatter v1.0.59
  [aa1ae85d] JuliaInterpreter v0.9.34
  [70703baa] JuliaSyntax v0.4.9
  [ccbc3e58] JumpProcesses v9.13.1
  [ef3ab10e] KLU v0.6.0
  [2c470bb0] Kronecker v0.5.5
  [ba0b0d4f] Krylov v0.9.6
  [5be7bae1] LBFGSB v0.4.1
  [929cbde3] LLVM v8.1.0
  [8ac3fa9e] LRUCache v1.6.1
  [b964fa9f] LaTeXStrings v1.3.1
  [2ee39098] LabelledArrays v1.16.0
  [984bce1d] LambertW v0.4.6
  [23fbe1c1] Latexify v0.16.5
  [10f19ff3] LayoutPointers v0.1.17
  [5078a376] LazyArrays v2.2.0
  [1d6d02ad] LeftChildRightSiblingTrees v0.2.0
  [2d8b4e74] LevyArea v1.0.0
  [9c8b4983] LightXML v0.9.1
  [d3d80556] LineSearches v7.3.0
  [9b3f67b0] LinearAlgebraX v0.2.7
  [7a12625a] LinearMaps v3.11.3
  [7ed4a6bd] LinearSolve v2.32.0
  [2ab3a3ac] LogExpFunctions v0.3.28
  [e6f89c97] LoggingExtras v1.0.3
  [bdcacae8] LoopVectorization v0.12.171
  [6f1432cf] LoweredCodeUtils v3.0.1
  [d8e11817] MLStyle v0.4.17
  [1914dd2f] MacroTools v0.5.13
  [af67fdf4] ManifoldDiff v0.3.10
  [1cead3c2] Manifolds v0.9.20
  [3362f125] ManifoldsBase v0.15.12
  [d125e4d3] ManualMemory v0.1.8
  [99c1a7ee] MatrixEquations v2.4.2
  [a3b82374] MatrixFactorizations v3.0.1
  [bb5d69b7] MaybeInplace v0.1.3
  [e1d29d7a] Missings v1.2.0
  [291d046c] MixedSubdivisions v1.1.3
  [961ee093] ModelingToolkit v9.31.0
  [7475f97c] Mods v2.2.4
  [46d2c3a1] MuladdMacro v0.2.4
  [3b2b4ff1] Multisets v0.4.4
  [102ac46a] MultivariatePolynomials v0.5.6
  [d8a4904e] MutableArithmetics v1.4.6
  [d41bc354] NLSolversBase v7.8.3
  [2774e3e8] NLsolve v4.5.1
  [77ba4419] NaNMath v1.0.2
  [356022a1] NamedDims v1.2.2
  [8913a72c] NonlinearSolve v3.13.1
  [482fc905] ODEParameterEstimation v1.0.0-DEV `~/.julia/dev/ODEParameterEstimation`
  [6fe1bfb0] OffsetArrays v1.14.1
  [5fb14364] OhMyREPL v0.5.28
  [429524aa] Optim v1.9.4
  [7f7a1694] Optimization v3.27.0
  [bca83a33] OptimizationBase v1.3.4
  [36348300] OptimizationOptimJL v0.3.2
  [bac558e1] OrderedCollections v1.6.3
  [1dea7af3] OrdinaryDiffEq v6.87.0
  [90014a1f] PDMats v0.11.31
  [65ce6f38] PackageExtensionCompat v1.0.2
  [d96e819e] Parameters v0.12.3
  [69de0a69] Parsers v2.8.1
  [2ae35dd2] Permutations v0.4.21
  [b98c9c47] Pipe v1.3.0
  [e409e4f3] PoissonRandom v0.4.4
  [f517fe37] Polyester v0.7.15
  [1d0040c9] PolyesterWeave v0.2.2
  [f27b6e38] Polynomials v4.0.11
  [85a6dd25] PositiveFactorizations v0.2.4
  [d236fae5] PreallocationTools v0.4.23
  [aea7be01] PrecompileTools v1.2.1
  [21216c6a] Preferences v1.4.3
  [08abe8d2] PrettyTables v2.3.2
  [27ebfcd6] Primes v0.5.6
  [33c8b6b6] ProgressLogging v0.1.4
  [92933f4c] ProgressMeter v1.10.2
  [01f381cc] ProjectiveVectors v1.1.4
  [43287f4e] PtrArrays v1.2.0
  [1fd47b50] QuadGK v2.10.1
  [94ee1d12] Quaternions v0.7.6
  [74087812] Random123 v1.7.0
  [e6cf234a] RandomNumbers v1.5.3
  [c1ae055f] RealDot v0.1.0
  [3cdcf5f2] RecipesBase v1.3.4
  [731186ca] RecursiveArrayTools v3.26.0
  [f2c3362d] RecursiveFactorization v0.2.23
  [189a3867] Reexport v1.2.2
  [ae029012] Requires v1.3.0
  [ae5879a3] ResettableStacks v1.1.1
  [295af30f] Revise v3.5.18
  [286e9d63] RingLists v0.2.8
  [79098fc4] Rmath v0.7.1
  [7e49a35a] RuntimeGeneratedFunctions v0.5.13
  [94e857df] SIMDTypes v0.1.0
  [476501e8] SLEEFPirates v0.6.43
  [0bca4576] SciMLBase v2.48.1
  [c0aeaf25] SciMLOperators v0.3.8
  [53ae85a6] SciMLStructures v1.4.2
  [8e049039] SemialgebraicSets v0.3.3
  [efcf1570] Setfield v1.1.1
  [55797a34] SimpleGraphs v0.8.6
  [727e6d20] SimpleNonlinearSolve v1.11.0
  [ec83eff0] SimplePartitions v0.3.2
  [cc47b68c] SimplePolynomials v0.2.17
  [a6525b86] SimpleRandom v0.3.1
  [699a6c99] SimpleTraits v0.9.4
  [ce78b400] SimpleUnPack v1.1.0
  [47aef6b3] SimpleWeightedGraphs v1.4.0
  [a2af1166] SortingAlgorithms v1.2.1
  [47a9eef4] SparseDiffTools v2.19.0
  [dc90abb0] SparseInverseSubset v0.1.2
  [0a514795] SparseMatrixColorings v0.3.6
  [e56a9233] Sparspak v0.3.9
  [276daf66] SpecialFunctions v2.4.0
  [aedffcd0] Static v1.1.1
  [0d7ed370] StaticArrayInterface v1.6.0
  [90137ffa] StaticArrays v1.9.7
  [1e83bf80] StaticArraysCore v1.4.3
  [10745b16] Statistics v1.11.1
  [82ae8749] StatsAPI v1.7.0
  [2913bbd2] StatsBase v0.34.3
  [4c63d2b9] StatsFuns v1.3.1
  [9672c7b4] SteadyStateDiffEq v2.3.0
  [789caeaf] StochasticDiffEq v6.67.0
  [7792a7ef] StrideArraysCore v0.5.7
  [892a3eda] StringManipulation v0.3.4
  [09ab397b] StructArrays v0.6.18
  [c3572dad] Sundials v4.24.0
  [fd094767] Suppressor v0.2.7
  [4297ee4d] SymbolicAnalysis v0.2.1
  [2efcf032] SymbolicIndexingInterface v0.3.28
⌃ [19f23fe9] SymbolicLimits v0.2.1
⌅ [d1185830] SymbolicUtils v2.1.1
  [0c5d862f] Symbolics v5.35.1
  [3783bdb8] TableTraits v1.0.1
  [bd369af6] Tables v1.12.0
  [b36ab563] TaylorDiff v0.2.4
⌅ [8ea1fca8] TermInterface v0.4.1
  [5d786b92] TerminalLoggers v0.1.7
  [8290d209] ThreadingUtilities v0.5.2
  [a759f4b9] TimerOutputs v0.5.24
  [0796e94c] Tokenize v0.5.29
  [a2a6695c] TreeViews v0.3.0
  [d5829a12] TriangularSolve v0.2.1
  [410a4b4d] Tricks v0.1.9
  [781d530d] TruncatedStacktraces v1.4.0
  [5c2747f8] URIs v1.5.1
  [3a884ed6] UnPack v1.0.2
  [1986cc42] Unitful v1.21.0
  [a7c27f48] Unityper v0.1.6
  [3d5dd08c] VectorizationBase v0.21.70
  [19fa3120] VertexSafeGraphs v0.2.0
  [e88e6eb3] Zygote v0.6.70
  [700de1a5] ZygoteRules v0.2.5
  [d9960996] Arb_jll v200.2300.0+0
  [f5851436] FFTW_jll v3.3.10+0
⌅ [e134572f] FLINT_jll v200.900.9+0
  [1d5cc7b8] IntelOpenMP_jll v2024.2.0+0
⌅ [dad2f222] LLVMExtra_jll v0.0.31+0
  [81d17ec3] L_BFGS_B_jll v3.0.1+0
  [94ce4f54] Libiconv_jll v1.17.0+0
  [856f044c] MKL_jll v2024.2.0+0
  [2ce0c516] MPC_jll v1.2.1+0
  [656ef2d0] OpenBLAS32_jll v0.3.27+1
  [efe28fd5] OpenSpecFun_jll v0.5.5+0
  [f50d1b31] Rmath_jll v0.4.2+0
⌅ [fb77eaff] Sundials_jll v5.2.3+0
⌅ [3428059b] SymEngine_jll v0.9.0+1
  [02c8fc9c] XML2_jll v2.13.1+0
⌅ [214eeab7] fzf_jll v0.43.0+0
  [1317d2d5] oneTBB_jll v2021.12.0+0
  [0dad84c5] ArgTools v1.1.2
  [56f22d72] Artifacts v1.11.0
  [2a0f44e3] Base64 v1.11.0
  [ade2ca70] Dates v1.11.0
  [8ba89e20] Distributed v1.11.0
  [f43a241f] Downloads v1.6.0
  [7b1f6079] FileWatching v1.11.0
  [9fa8497b] Future v1.11.0
  [b77e0a4c] InteractiveUtils v1.11.0
  [4af54fe1] LazyArtifacts v1.11.0
  [b27032c2] LibCURL v0.6.4
  [76f85450] LibGit2 v1.11.0
  [8f399da3] Libdl v1.11.0
  [37e2e46d] LinearAlgebra v1.11.0
  [56ddb016] Logging v1.11.0
  [d6f4376e] Markdown v1.11.0
  [a63ad114] Mmap v1.11.0
  [ca575930] NetworkOptions v1.2.0
  [44cfe95a] Pkg v1.11.0
  [de0858da] Printf v1.11.0
  [3fa0cd96] REPL v1.11.0
  [9a3f8284] Random v1.11.0
  [ea8e919c] SHA v0.7.0
  [9e88b42a] Serialization v1.11.0
  [1a1011a3] SharedArrays v1.11.0
  [6462fe0b] Sockets v1.11.0
  [2f01184e] SparseArrays v1.11.0
  [f489334b] StyledStrings v1.11.0
  [4607b0f0] SuiteSparse
  [fa267f1f] TOML v1.0.3
  [a4e569a6] Tar v1.10.0
  [8dfed614] Test v1.11.0
  [cf7118a7] UUIDs v1.11.0
  [4ec0a83e] Unicode v1.11.0
  [e66e0078] CompilerSupportLibraries_jll v1.1.1+0
  [781609d7] GMP_jll v6.3.0+0
  [deac9b47] LibCURL_jll v8.6.0+0
  [e37daf67] LibGit2_jll v1.7.2+0
  [29816b5a] LibSSH2_jll v1.11.0+1
  [3a97d323] MPFR_jll v4.2.1+0
  [c8ffd9c3] MbedTLS_jll v2.28.6+0
  [14a3606d] MozillaCACerts_jll v2023.12.12
  [4536629a] OpenBLAS_jll v0.3.27+1
  [05823500] OpenLibm_jll v0.8.1+2
  [bea87d4a] SuiteSparse_jll v7.7.0+0
  [83775a58] Zlib_jll v1.2.13+1
  [8e850b90] libblastrampoline_jll v5.10.1+0
  [8e850ede] nghttp2_jll v1.59.0+0
  [3f19e933] p7zip_jll v17.4.0+2

You can try using x instead of t like this

function main()
       
               @variables x a(x) b(x)
               D = Differential(x)
               q = a / b
       
               for i in 1:5
                       q2 = deepcopy(q)
               q3 = D(q2)
               q4 = expand_derivatives(q3)
               q = deepcopy(q4)
               display(q)
               end
       end

and you will get

Add it to that issue so we can make it a test case.

I added the issue.
Based on Issue 483, it seems like this might be a failure of some Monomial ordering definition. Monomial ordering doesn’t sound that hard (famous last words) and I might be willing to take a stab at fixing it. Do you happen to know where I should look? (Are you close enough to Symbolics.jl to know if this issue is maybe more subtle than it sounds?)

@mohamed.d180 Do you have a sense of why that works?