How to catch and fix a warning/error that goes away almost immediately?

Question

I wrote the following code

ClearAll["Global`*"]

simulateRandomWalk[steps_Integer, prob_] :=
  Module[{accumulatedSteps, plotRange},

   accumulatedSteps = 
    Prepend[Accumulate[
      RandomChoice[{N[1 - prob], N[prob]} -> {-1, 1}, steps]], 0];
   plotRange = {{0, steps}, {Min[accumulatedSteps] - 1, 
      Max[accumulatedSteps] + 1}};

   Animate[
    ListLinePlot[{Range[0, n], Take[accumulatedSteps, n + 1]} // 
      Transpose,
     PlotRange -> plotRange], {n, Range[0, steps], 
     AnimationRepetitions -> 1}
    ]
   ];

simulateRandomWalk[100, 0.5]

to simulate a random walk with $n$ steps and a probability $p$ of going up (and $1 - p$ for going down). However, it appears that ListLinePlot gives me some warnings/error that go away almost immediately, so I cannot see them well, let alone deal with them. Any ideas as to what I should do?

Answer 1

Interesting! Add Pause[10] between your two lines, and you'll get some time to peruse the output. Equivalently, split it into two cells, and re-run the definition of simulateRandomWalk after you've got some valid output.

The output of Animate is "Dynamic". When a new definition of the module inside simulateRandomWalk is created, a new local variable called accumulatedSteps$5432 (or similar) is created, so the previous output from simulateRandomWalk is invalidated because the previous accumulatedSteps$4321 (or whatever the local variable happens to be called) gets deleted. The output of Animate then attempts to re-render but it has insufficient input so you get your error message. However, valid output gets re-created a few milliseconds later because the function simulateRandomWalk gets called next.

If you use DynamicModule instead of Module the issue goes away. I don't understand dynamic outputs well enough to explain the mechanics exactly.

Answer 2

If you use With instead and factor in plotRange directly, it also works flawlessly:

simulateRandomWalk[steps_Integer, prob_] := 
  With[{accumulatedSteps = 
    Prepend[Accumulate[
      RandomChoice[{N[1 - prob], N[prob]} -> {-1, 1}, steps]], 0]},
  Animate[
    ListLinePlot[{Range[0, n], Take[accumulatedSteps, n + 1]}
      //Transpose, 
      PlotRange -> {{0, steps},
      {Min[accumulatedSteps] - 1, 
       Max[accumulatedSteps] + 1}}],
    {n, Range[0, steps]}, AnimationRepetitions -> 1]];