Minimal character-level language model with a Vanilla Recurrent Neural Network, in Python/numpy

min-char-rnn.py

"""
Minimal character-level Vanilla RNN model. Written by Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy)
BSD License
"""
import numpy as np

# data I/O
data = open('input.txt', 'r').read() # should be simple plain text file
chars = list(set(data))
data_size, vocab_size = len(data), len(chars)
print 'data has %d characters, %d unique.' % (data_size, vocab_size)
char_to_ix = { ch:i for i,ch in enumerate(chars) }
ix_to_char = { i:ch for i,ch in enumerate(chars) }

# hyperparameters
hidden_size = 100 # size of hidden layer of neurons
seq_length = 25 # number of steps to unroll the RNN for
learning_rate = 1e-1

# model parameters
Wxh = np.random.randn(hidden_size, vocab_size)*0.01 # input to hidden
Whh = np.random.randn(hidden_size, hidden_size)*0.01 # hidden to hidden
Why = np.random.randn(vocab_size, hidden_size)*0.01 # hidden to output
bh = np.zeros((hidden_size, 1)) # hidden bias
by = np.zeros((vocab_size, 1)) # output bias

def lossFun(inputs, targets, hprev):
  """
  inputs,targets are both list of integers.
  hprev is Hx1 array of initial hidden state
  returns the loss, gradients on model parameters, and last hidden state
  """
  xs, hs, ys, ps = {}, {}, {}, {}
  hs[-1] = np.copy(hprev)
  loss = 0
  # forward pass
  for t in xrange(len(inputs)):
    xs[t] = np.zeros((vocab_size,1)) # encode in 1-of-k representation
    xs[t][inputs[t]] = 1
    hs[t] = np.tanh(np.dot(Wxh, xs[t]) + np.dot(Whh, hs[t-1]) + bh) # hidden state
    ys[t] = np.dot(Why, hs[t]) + by # unnormalized log probabilities for next chars
    ps[t] = np.exp(ys[t]) / np.sum(np.exp(ys[t])) # probabilities for next chars
    loss += -np.log(ps[t][targets[t],0]) # softmax (cross-entropy loss)
  # backward pass: compute gradients going backwards
  dWxh, dWhh, dWhy = np.zeros_like(Wxh), np.zeros_like(Whh), np.zeros_like(Why)
  dbh, dby = np.zeros_like(bh), np.zeros_like(by)
  dhnext = np.zeros_like(hs[0])
  for t in reversed(xrange(len(inputs))):
    dy = np.copy(ps[t])
    dy[targets[t]] -= 1 # backprop into y. see http://cs231n.github.io/neural-networks-case-study/#grad if confused here
    dWhy += np.dot(dy, hs[t].T)
    dby += dy
    dh = np.dot(Why.T, dy) + dhnext # backprop into h
    dhraw = (1 - hs[t] * hs[t]) * dh # backprop through tanh nonlinearity
    dbh += dhraw
    dWxh += np.dot(dhraw, xs[t].T)
    dWhh += np.dot(dhraw, hs[t-1].T)
    dhnext = np.dot(Whh.T, dhraw)
  for dparam in [dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby]:
    np.clip(dparam, -5, 5, out=dparam) # clip to mitigate exploding gradients
  return loss, dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby, hs[len(inputs)-1]

def sample(h, seed_ix, n):
  """ 
  sample a sequence of integers from the model 
  h is memory state, seed_ix is seed letter for first time step
  """
  x = np.zeros((vocab_size, 1))
  x[seed_ix] = 1
  ixes = []
  for t in xrange(n):
    h = np.tanh(np.dot(Wxh, x) + np.dot(Whh, h) + bh)
    y = np.dot(Why, h) + by
    p = np.exp(y) / np.sum(np.exp(y))
    ix = np.random.choice(range(vocab_size), p=p.ravel())
    x = np.zeros((vocab_size, 1))
    x[ix] = 1
    ixes.append(ix)
  return ixes

n, p = 0, 0
mWxh, mWhh, mWhy = np.zeros_like(Wxh), np.zeros_like(Whh), np.zeros_like(Why)
mbh, mby = np.zeros_like(bh), np.zeros_like(by) # memory variables for Adagrad
smooth_loss = -np.log(1.0/vocab_size)*seq_length # loss at iteration 0
while True:
  # prepare inputs (we're sweeping from left to right in steps seq_length long)
  if p+seq_length+1 >= len(data) or n == 0: 
    hprev = np.zeros((hidden_size,1)) # reset RNN memory
    p = 0 # go from start of data
  inputs = [char_to_ix[ch] for ch in data[p:p+seq_length]]
  targets = [char_to_ix[ch] for ch in data[p+1:p+seq_length+1]]

  # sample from the model now and then
  if n % 100 == 0:
    sample_ix = sample(hprev, inputs[0], 200)
    txt = ''.join(ix_to_char[ix] for ix in sample_ix)
    print '----\n %s \n----' % (txt, )

  # forward seq_length characters through the net and fetch gradient
  loss, dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby, hprev = lossFun(inputs, targets, hprev)
  smooth_loss = smooth_loss * 0.999 + loss * 0.001
  if n % 100 == 0: print 'iter %d, loss: %f' % (n, smooth_loss) # print progress
  
  # perform parameter update with Adagrad
  for param, dparam, mem in zip([Wxh, Whh, Why, bh, by], 
                                [dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby], 
                                [mWxh, mWhh, mWhy, mbh, mby]):
    mem += dparam * dparam
    param += -learning_rate * dparam / np.sqrt(mem + 1e-8) # adagrad update

  p += seq_length # move data pointer
  n += 1 # iteration counter 

@karpathy Thank you for posting this. I had a small doubt in line 58. Why do we perform Whh.T in np.dot(Whh.T,dhraw)? Since Whh has (hidden_size,hidden_size) as shape, we can directly multiply it with dhraw. Or am I missing something here?

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "minimal_rnn.py", line 100, in
loss, dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby, hprev = lossFun(inputs, targets, hprev)
File "minimal_rnn.py", line 43, in lossFun
loss += -np.log(ps[t][targets[t],0]) # softmax (cross-entropy loss)
IndexError: list index out of range

Why am I getting this error?

I was getting the same error but it seems like the reason is that your input file is too small. Try writing more stuff in your input.txt

I made a two layer recurrent neural network based off of this and I am not sure why it does not work. So, if anyone could check out and make a PR if you find a problem?
https://github.com/lanttu1243/vanilla_recurrent_neural_network.git

Hi, can anyone explain the line where we pass in the gradient through the softmax function " dy [targets[t]] -=1 ". Why are we doing this operation ??

To anyone finding the code hard to understand, I provide detailed explanations here: https://mkffl.github.io/ Hope it helps

Good explanation for second part of lossFunction.

Could someone explain how to use this? I can't generate text. It is running though.

@pjoer, do you have an input.txt file (really any text file) in the same directory of this file which you should be running like python min-char-rnn.py

It seems the above was written with python2 in mind, but I just updated a few lines and got it working on Python 3.9.6: https://gist.github.com/ijkilchenko/84be862a5e18240c59b4505177c9c34c

Good luck!