Check for single prompt in __call__ method of the BaseLLM class (#4892)

# Ensuring that users pass a single prompt when calling a LLM 

- This PR adds a check to the `__call__` method of the `BaseLLM` class
to ensure that it is called with a single prompt
- Raises a `ValueError` if users try to call a LLM with a list of prompt
and instructs them to use the `generate` method instead

## Why this could be useful

I stumbled across this by accident. I accidentally called the OpenAI LLM
with a list of prompts instead of a single string and still got a
result:

```
>>> from langchain.llms import OpenAI
>>> llm = OpenAI()
>>> llm(["Tell a joke"]*2)
"\n\nQ: Why don't scientists trust atoms?\nA: Because they make up everything!"
```

It might be better to catch such a scenario preventing unnecessary costs
and irritation for the user.

## Proposed behaviour

```
>>> from langchain.llms import OpenAI
>>> llm = OpenAI()
>>> llm(["Tell a joke"]*2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/marcus/Projects/langchain/langchain/llms/base.py", line 291, in __call__
    raise ValueError(
ValueError: Argument `prompt` is expected to be a single string, not a list. If you want to run the LLM on multiple prompts, use `generate` instead.
```
searx_updates
Marcus Winter 1 year ago committed by GitHub
parent 6c60251f52
commit 2aa3754024
No known key found for this signature in database
GPG Key ID: 4AEE18F83AFDEB23

@ -287,6 +287,12 @@ class BaseLLM(BaseLanguageModel, ABC):
self, prompt: str, stop: Optional[List[str]] = None, callbacks: Callbacks = None
) -> str:
"""Check Cache and run the LLM on the given prompt and input."""
if not isinstance(prompt, str):
raise ValueError(
"Argument `prompt` is expected to be a string. Instead found "
f"{type(prompt)}. If you want to run the LLM on multiple prompts, use "
"`generate` instead."
)
return (
self.generate([prompt], stop=stop, callbacks=callbacks)
.generations[0][0]

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