add ck_sysread() for better sysread/read/recv sanity
[p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git] / pod / perldiag.pod
CommitLineData
a0d0e21e 1=head1 NAME
2
3perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
4
5=head1 DESCRIPTION
6
7These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
8desperation):
9
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
54310121 15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
cb1a09d0 16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
a0d0e21e 17
748a9306 18Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
68dc0745 19be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
748a9306 21Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
22L<perlfunc/eval>.
a0d0e21e 23
24Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
2ba9eb46 25just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
702d120d 26The symbols C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
a0d0e21e 27
28=over 4
29
30=item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
31
32(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
33to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
34if you want to localize a package variable.
35
2ba9eb46 36=item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same scope
37
fb73857a 38(W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the same scope, effectively
2ba9eb46 39eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost always
8b1a09fc 40a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
2ba9eb46 41until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
42destroyed.
43
a0d0e21e 44=item "no" not allowed in expression
45
46(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
47no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
48
49=item "use" not allowed in expression
50
51(F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
52no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
53
54=item % may only be used in unpack
55
5f05dabc 56(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
a0d0e21e 57checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
58way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
59
60=item %s (...) interpreted as function
61
62(W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
8b1a09fc 63by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
5f05dabc 64found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
a0d0e21e 65
66=item %s argument is not a HASH element
67
5f05dabc 68(F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
a0d0e21e 69
70 $foo{$bar}
71 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
72
5f05dabc 73=item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
74
75(F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
76
77 $foo{$bar}
78 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
79
80or a hash slice, such as
81
82 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
83 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
84
a0d0e21e 85=item %s did not return a true value
86
87(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
88it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
89traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
90do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
91
92=item %s found where operator expected
93
94(S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
95sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
96it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
97delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
98
f86702cc 99=item %s had compilation errors
a0d0e21e 100
101(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
102
f86702cc 103=item %s has too many errors
a0d0e21e 104
105(F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
106Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
107
108=item %s matches null string many times
109
110(W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
111regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
112
113=item %s never introduced
114
115(S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
116before it could possibly have been used.
117
118=item %s syntax OK
119
120(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
121
f86702cc 122=item %s: Command not found
cb1a09d0 123
124(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 125of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
126Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 127
f86702cc 128=item %s: Expression syntax
cb1a09d0 129
130(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 131of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
132Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 133
f86702cc 134=item %s: Undefined variable
cb1a09d0 135
136(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 137of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
138Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 139
140=item %s: not found
141
8b1a09fc 142(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
3a52c276 143instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
cb1a09d0 144into Perl yourself.
145
702d120d 146=item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
147
148(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
149found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
150the previous line just because you saw this message.
151
a0d0e21e 152=item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
153
154(F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
155which provides a race condition that breaks security.
156
157=item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
158
159(F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
160know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
161
08e9d68e 162=item C<-p> destination: %s
163
164(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
165command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
166redirected it with select().)
167
a5f75d66 168=item 500 Server error
169
170See Server error.
171
a0d0e21e 172=item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
173
174(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
175if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
176
177=item @ outside of string
178
2ba9eb46 179(F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
a0d0e21e 180the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
181
182=item accept() on closed fd
183
184(W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
185the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
186
187=item Allocation too large: %lx
188
54310121 189(X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
55497cff 190
2ae324a7 191=item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
192
2c268ad5 193(W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
2ae324a7 194operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
195or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
196length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
197that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
198L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
199
a0d0e21e 200=item Arg too short for msgsnd
201
202(F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
203
748a9306 204=item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
205
206(W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
207you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
5f05dabc 208a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
748a9306 209
a0d0e21e 210=item Args must match #! line
211
212(F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
3a52c276 213with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
214impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
215for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
a0d0e21e 216
f86702cc 217=item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
a0d0e21e 218
219(W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
220expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
221will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
222
223=item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
224
225(D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
226is now heavily deprecated.
227
228=item assertion botched: %s
229
230(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
231
232=item Assertion failed: file "%s"
233
234(P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
235
236=item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
237
238(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
239must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
240know which context to supply to the right side.
241
242=item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
243
244(P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
245be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
246of those arenas.
247
54310121 248=item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
bbce6d69 249
250(P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
251optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
252indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
253that can no longer be found in the table.
254
a0d0e21e 255=item Attempt to free temp prematurely
256
257(W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
258routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
259the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
260routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
261it.
262
263=item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
264
265(P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
266
267=item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
268
269(W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
270would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
271and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
272could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
273SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
274when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
275
84902520 276=item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
277
278(W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
279function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
280means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
281invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
282literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
283avoid this warning.
284
b7a902f4 285=item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
286
287(W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
8b1a09fc 288as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
b7a902f4 289dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
290
a0d0e21e 291=item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
292
293(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
2ba9eb46 294shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
5f05dabc 295S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
a0d0e21e 296S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
297
a0d0e21e 298=item Bad filehandle: %s
299
300(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
301has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
302did it in another package.
303
304=item Bad free() ignored
305
306(S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
33c8a3fe 307malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
308setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
309
310This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
311"hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
312C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
313system malloc().
a0d0e21e 314
aa689395 315=item Bad hash
316
317(P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
318
f1192cee 319=item Bad index while coercing array into hash
320
321(F) A field name of a typed variable was looked up in the %FIELDS
322hash, but the index found was not legal, i.e. less than 1.
323
57079c46 324=item Bad index while coercing array into hash
325
326(F) The index looked up in the hash found as 0'th element of the array
327is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
328
a0d0e21e 329=item Bad name after %s::
330
331(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
332finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
333so
334
335 $var = 'myvar';
336 $sym = mypack::$var;
337
338is not the same as
339
340 $var = 'myvar';
341 $sym = "mypack::$var";
342
343=item Bad symbol for array
344
345(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
346wasn't a symbol table entry.
347
348=item Bad symbol for filehandle
349
350(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
351wasn't a symbol table entry.
352
353=item Bad symbol for hash
354
355(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
356wasn't a symbol table entry.
357
8b1a09fc 358=item Badly placed ()'s
cb1a09d0 359
360(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 361of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
362Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 363
3fe9a6f1 364=item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
365
366(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
367subroutine identifier, in curly braces or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
54310121 368Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
3fe9a6f1 369
c3e0f903 370=item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
371
372(W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
373the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
374Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
375
a0d0e21e 376=item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
377
378(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
379Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
380
68dc0745 381=item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
382
383(F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
384implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
385already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
386could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
387likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
388
a0d0e21e 389=item bind() on closed fd
390
391(W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
392the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
393
4633a7c4 394=item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
395
396(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
397
a0d0e21e 398=item Callback called exit
399
400(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
401exited by calling exit.
402
0a753a76 403=item Can't "goto" outside a block
404
405(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
406like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
407occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
408is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
409
84902520 410=item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
411
412(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
413foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
414
a0d0e21e 415=item Can't "last" outside a block
416
417(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
418except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
419current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
0a753a76 420"loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
421the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
422will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
a0d0e21e 423
424=item Can't "next" outside a block
425
426(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
427there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
0a753a76 428count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
429usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
54310121 430curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
a0d0e21e 431
432=item Can't "redo" outside a block
433
434(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
435there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
0a753a76 436count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
437usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
54310121 438curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
a0d0e21e 439
440=item Can't bless non-reference value
441
442(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
443encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
444
445=item Can't break at that line
446
54310121 447(S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
a0d0e21e 448the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
449be stopped at.
450
451=item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
452
453(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
454functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
455in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
456
457=item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
458
54310121 459(F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
a0d0e21e 460ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
461you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
462an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
463
464=item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
465
466(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
467object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
468neither an object reference nor a package name. (Perhaps it's null?)
469Something like this will reproduce the error:
470
471 $BADREF = undef;
472 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
473 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
474
475=item Can't chdir to %s
476
477(F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
478that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
479
480=item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
481
482(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 483(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
a0d0e21e 484say things like:
485
486 *foo += 1;
487
488You CAN say
489
490 $foo = *foo;
491 $foo += 1;
492
493but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
494
495=item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
496
497(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 498(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
a0d0e21e 499
500=item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
501
502(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 503(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
a0d0e21e 504
57079c46 505=item Can't coerce array into hash
506
507(F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
508information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
509only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
510
a0d0e21e 511=item Can't create pipe mailbox
512
748a9306 513(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
514or other plumbing problems.
a0d0e21e 515
516=item Can't declare %s in my
517
5f05dabc 518(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
a0d0e21e 519They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
520
521=item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
522
523(S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
524
54310121 525=item Can't do inplace edit without backup
a0d0e21e 526
54310121 527(F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
3fe9a6f1 528from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
a0d0e21e 529such.
530
8b1a09fc 531=item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
a0d0e21e 532
533(S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
534
535=item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
536
537(S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
538/dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
539
540=item Can't do setegid!
541
542(P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
543of suidperl.
544
545=item Can't do seteuid!
546
547(P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
548
549=item Can't do setuid
550
551(F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
552do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
553form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
554under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
555If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
556your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
557
558=item Can't do waitpid with flags
559
560(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
561without flags is emulated.
562
8b1a09fc 563=item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
a0d0e21e 564
565(F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
566your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
567
568=item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
569
570(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
571For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
572
573=item Can't exec "%s": %s
574
5f05dabc 575(W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
a0d0e21e 576program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
577were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
578executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
579#! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
580similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
581
582=item Can't exec %s
583
584(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
585what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
586mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
587
588=item Can't execute %s
589
2a92aaa0 590(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
591in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
592
593=item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
594
595(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
596in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
597exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
598
599=item Can't find %s on PATH
600
a0d0e21e 601(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
2a92aaa0 602in the PATH.
a0d0e21e 603
604=item Can't find label %s
605
606(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
607for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
608
609=item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
610
611(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
5f05dabc 612the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
a0d0e21e 613levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
614
fb73857a 615 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
616
617If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
618included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
619programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
a0d0e21e 620
621=item Can't fork
622
623(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
624
748a9306 625=item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
626
627(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
628access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
629access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
630that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
631assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
632it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
633retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
634but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
5f05dabc 635routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
748a9306 636appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
637returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
638knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
639see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
640code takes stat buffers lightly.)
641
a0d0e21e 642=item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
643
748a9306 644(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
645can't retrieve its name for later use.
a0d0e21e 646
647=item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
648
748a9306 649(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
650mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
a0d0e21e 651
652=item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
653
654(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
655call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
5f05dabc 656you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
a0d0e21e 657L<perlfunc/goto>.
658
b150fb22 659=item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
660
661(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
662(You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
663
706a304b 664=item Can't localize through a reference
4633a7c4 665
706a304b 666(F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
667handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
668pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
669sure that $ref will still be a reference.
4633a7c4 670
748a9306 671=item Can't localize lexical variable %s
672
2ba9eb46 673(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
748a9306 674lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
675localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
676package name.
677
4727527e 678=item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
679
680(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
681but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
682in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
683doing C<make install>.
684
38b8243a 685=item Can't locate %s in @INC
a0d0e21e 686
7a2e2cd6 687(F) You said to do (or require, or use) a file that couldn't be found
54310121 688in any of the libraries mentioned in @INC. Perhaps you need to set the
689PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra library
690is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or maybe
a0d0e21e 691you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>.
692
693=item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
694
695(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
696functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
2ba9eb46 697method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
a0d0e21e 698
699=item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
700
701(W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
702to exist.
703
3e3baf6d 704=item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
705
706(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
707
a0d0e21e 708=item Can't modify %s in %s
709
710(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
5f05dabc 711change it, such as with an auto-increment.
a0d0e21e 712
54310121 713=item Can't modify nonexistent substring
a0d0e21e 714
715(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
716a NULL.
717
5f05dabc 718=item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
a0d0e21e 719
5f05dabc 720(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
a0d0e21e 721buffer.
722
723=item Can't open %s: %s
724
08e9d68e 725(S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
726filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
727switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
728is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
729on the command line.
a0d0e21e 730
731=item Can't open bidirectional pipe
732
733(W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
734try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
7e1af8bc 735IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
a0d0e21e 736and then read it in under a different file handle.
737
748a9306 738=item Can't open error file %s as stderr
739
740(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
8b1a09fc 741couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
742command line for writing.
748a9306 743
744=item Can't open input file %s as stdin
745
746(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
8b1a09fc 747couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
748a9306 748
749=item Can't open output file %s as stdout
750
751(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
8b1a09fc 752couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
753line for writing.
748a9306 754
755=item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
756
757(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
758couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
759
a0d0e21e 760=item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
761
762(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
763
7bac28a0 764=item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
765
766(F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
767pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
768was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
769this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
770
a0d0e21e 771=item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
772
773(S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
774you don't have write permission to the directory.
775
748a9306 776=item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
777
778(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
779reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
780
a0d0e21e 781=item Can't reswap uid and euid
782
783(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
784of suidperl.
785
786=item Can't return outside a subroutine
787
788(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
789there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
790
791=item Can't stat script "%s"
792
793(P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
794it open already. Bizarre.
795
796=item Can't swap uid and euid
797
798(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
799of suidperl.
800
801=item Can't take log of %g
802
fb73857a 803(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
804negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
805standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
806the negative numbers.
a0d0e21e 807
808=item Can't take sqrt of %g
809
810(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
fb73857a 811negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
812with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
a0d0e21e 813
814=item Can't undef active subroutine
815
816(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
817however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
818redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
819
820=item Can't unshift
821
822(F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
823as the main Perl stack.
824
825=item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
826
827(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
828it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
829so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
830message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
831
832=item Can't upgrade to undef
833
834(P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
835of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
836code calling sv_upgrade.
837
1d2dff63 838=item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
839
840(F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
841Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
842provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
843
c07a80fd 844=item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
845
846(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
8b1a09fc 847You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
c07a80fd 848and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
849Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
850lexical variable.
851
a0d0e21e 852=item Can't use %s for loop variable
853
854(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
855
856=item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
857
858(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
859reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
860test the type of the reference, if need be.
861
748a9306 862=item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
863
864(W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
865a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
5f05dabc 866to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
748a9306 867Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
868out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
869
44a8e56a 870=item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
871
872(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
873are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
874
748a9306 875=item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
a0d0e21e 876
877(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
878are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
879
880=item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
881
882(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
54310121 883be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
a0d0e21e 884
a0d0e21e 885=item Can't use global %s in "my"
886
887(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
5f05dabc 888not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
a0d0e21e 889the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
890variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
891weren't.
892
748a9306 893=item Can't use subscript on %s
894
895(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
896subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
897didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
898
5f05dabc 899=item Can't x= to read-only value
a0d0e21e 900
901(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
902an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
903Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
904
b6c543e3 905=item Cannot find an opnumber for "%s"
906
907(F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
908there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
909
e7ea3e70 910=item Cannot resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
911
912(F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
913opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
914package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
915
4599a1de 916=item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
917
918(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
919with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
920If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
921expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
922backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
923
924=item Character class syntax [: :] is reserved for future extensions
925
926(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
927with "[:" and ending with ":]" is reserved for future extensions.
928If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
929expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
930backslash: "\[:" and ":\]".
931
932=item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
933
934(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
935beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
936If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
937expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
938backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
939
a0d0e21e 940=item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
941
942(W) A novice will sometimes say
943
944 chmod 777, $filename
945
946not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
947to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
948
8b1a09fc 949=item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
a0d0e21e 950
951(W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
952
7a2e2cd6 953=item Compilation failed in require
954
955(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
956Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
957were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
958
a0d0e21e 959=item connect() on closed fd
960
961(W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
962the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
963
4cee8e80 964=item Constant subroutine %s redefined
965
966(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
967inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
968workarounds.
969
9607fc9c 970=item Constant subroutine %s undefined
971
972(S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
973inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
974workarounds.
975
e7ea3e70 976=item Copy method did not return a reference
977
978(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
979
a0d0e21e 980=item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
981
982(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
983
984=item corrupted regexp pointers
985
986(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
987expression compiler gave it.
988
989=item corrupted regexp program
990
991(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
992a valid magic number.
993
994=item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
995
996(W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
3e3baf6d 997times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
a0d0e21e 998recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
999case it indicates something else.
1000
fc36a67e 1001=item Delimiter for here document is too long
1002
1003(F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1004C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1005twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1006
4633a7c4 1007=item Did you mean &%s instead?
1008
1009(W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1010
748a9306 1011=item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
a0d0e21e 1012
748a9306 1013(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1014On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1015
7e1af8bc 1016=item Died
5f05dabc 1017
1018(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1019you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1020
54310121 1021=item Do you need to predeclare %s?
748a9306 1022
1023(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1024found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1025name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1026because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1027"sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1028referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1029to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1030can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1031declaration.
a0d0e21e 1032
1033=item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1034
1035(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1036
1037=item do_study: out of memory
1038
1039(P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1040
1041=item Duplicate free() ignored
1042
1043(S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1044been freed.
1045
4633a7c4 1046=item elseif should be elsif
1047
1048(S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1049ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1050named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1051unlikely to be what you want.
1052
a0d0e21e 1053=item END failed--cleanup aborted
1054
1055(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1056The interpreter is immediately exited.
1057
748a9306 1058=item Error converting file specification %s
1059
5f05dabc 1060(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
748a9306 1061specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1062single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1063passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1064case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1065
fc36a67e 1066=item Excessively long <> operator
1067
1068(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1069Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1070filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1071variable and glob that.
1072
f86702cc 1073=item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
a0d0e21e 1074
1075(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1076
1077=item Exiting eval via %s
1078
8b1a09fc 1079(W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
a0d0e21e 1080a goto, or a loop control statement.
1081
0a753a76 1082=item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1083
1084(W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1085subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1086statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1087
a0d0e21e 1088=item Exiting subroutine via %s
1089
8b1a09fc 1090(W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
a0d0e21e 1091a goto, or a loop control statement.
1092
1093=item Exiting substitution via %s
1094
8b1a09fc 1095(W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
a0d0e21e 1096a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1097
7b8d334a 1098=item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1099
1100(W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1101the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1102usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1103package, e.g. bless($ref, $p or 'MyPackage');
1104
748a9306 1105=item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
a0d0e21e 1106
748a9306 1107(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1108service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1109filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1110the Perl source code is distressed.
a0d0e21e 1111
1112=item fcntl is not implemented
1113
1114(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1115PDP-11 or something?
1116
1117=item Filehandle %s never opened
1118
1119(W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1120You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1121the FileHandle package.
1122
5f05dabc 1123=item Filehandle %s opened for only input
a0d0e21e 1124
1125(W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1126intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
8b1a09fc 1127"+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
5f05dabc 1128you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
8b1a09fc 1129L<perlfunc/open>.
a0d0e21e 1130
5f05dabc 1131=item Filehandle opened for only input
a0d0e21e 1132
1133(W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1134intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
8b1a09fc 1135"+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
5f05dabc 1136you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
8b1a09fc 1137L<perlfunc/open>.
a0d0e21e 1138
1139=item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1140
1141(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1142a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1143that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1144the name.
1145
1146=item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1147
1148(F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1149a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1150that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1151the name.
1152
1153=item Format %s redefined
1154
1155(W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1156
1157 {
1158 local $^W = 0;
1159 eval "format NAME =...";
1160 }
1161
1162=item Format not terminated
1163
1164(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1165to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1166
1167=item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1168
1169(W) You said
1170
1171 if ($foo = 123)
1172
1173when you meant
1174
1175 if ($foo == 123)
1176
1177(or something like that).
1178
1179=item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1180
1181(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1182
1183=item gethostent not implemented
1184
1185(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1186because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1187on the Internet.
1188
1189=item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1190
1191(W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1192Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1193
748a9306 1194=item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1195
1196(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1197C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1198
1199
a0d0e21e 1200=item Glob not terminated
1201
1202(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1203a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1204finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1205the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1206
1207=item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1208
68dc0745 1209(F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1210must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
a0d0e21e 1211say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1212
1213=item goto must have label
1214
1215(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1216unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1217
1218=item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1219
1220(S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1221existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1222an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1223
1224=item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1225
1226(D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1227is now heavily deprecated.
1228
8903cb82 1229=item Identifier too long
1230
1231(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
fc36a67e 1232about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1233names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1234versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
8903cb82 1235
8b1a09fc 1236=item Ill-formed logical name |%s| in prime_env_iter
a0d0e21e 1237
8b1a09fc 1238(W) A warning peculiar to VMS. A logical name was encountered when preparing
1239to iterate over %ENV which violates the syntactic rules governing logical
5f05dabc 1240names. Because it cannot be translated normally, it is skipped, and will not
1241appear in %ENV. This may be a benign occurrence, as some software packages
54310121 1242might directly modify logical name tables and introduce nonstandard names,
8b1a09fc 1243or it may indicate that a logical name table has been corrupted.
a0d0e21e 1244
4fdae800 1245=item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1246
1247(F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1248error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
54310121 1249multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1250
1251Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
68dc0745 1252either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
54310121 1253transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
68dc0745 1254properly converting the text file format.
1255
1256Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1257text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1258handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1259
1260In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1261converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1262executed.
4fdae800 1263
a0d0e21e 1264=item Illegal division by zero
1265
1266(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1267logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1268
1269=item Illegal modulus zero
1270
1271(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1272don't take to this kindly.
1273
1274=item Illegal octal digit
1275
1276(F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1277
748a9306 1278=item Illegal octal digit ignored
1279
1280(W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1281of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1282
6ff81951 1283=item Illegal hex digit ignored
1284
1285(W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F in a
1286hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1287before the illegal character.
1288
54310121 1289=item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1290
1291(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1292following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1293
9607fc9c 1294=item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1295
1296(F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1297array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1298used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1299instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1300indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1301program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1302that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1303
a0d0e21e 1304=item Insecure dependency in %s
1305
8b1a09fc 1306(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
a0d0e21e 1307The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1308or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1309labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1310who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1311used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1312for more information.
1313
1314=item Insecure directory in %s
1315
1316(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
8b1a09fc 1317script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
a0d0e21e 1318See L<perlsec>.
1319
62f468fc 1320=item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
a0d0e21e 1321
1322(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
62f468fc 1323setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1324C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
a0d0e21e 1325potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1326known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1327
bbce6d69 1328=item Integer overflow in hex number
1329
1330(S) The literal hex number you have specified is too big for your
1331architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest hex literal is
13320xFFFFFFFF.
1333
1334=item Integer overflow in octal number
1335
1336(S) The literal octal number you have specified is too big for your
1337architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest octal literal is
1338037777777777.
1339
748a9306 1340=item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1341
1342(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
5f05dabc 1343of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
2ba9eb46 1344whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
748a9306 1345script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/exec>). Somehow, this count
1346has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1347this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1348and execute the specified command.
1349
a0d0e21e 1350=item internal disaster in regexp
1351
1352(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1353
5cd24f17 1354=item internal error: glob failed
1355
1356(P) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1357and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. This may mean that your csh (C shell) is
1358broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1359config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1360were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1361empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1362think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1363C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1364
a0d0e21e 1365=item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1366
1367(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1368
1369=item invalid [] range in regexp
1370
1371(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1372greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1373
c635e13b 1374=item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1375
878e08df 1376(W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
c635e13b 1377See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1378
96e4d5b1 1379=item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1380
8903cb82 1381(F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
fb73857a 1382(W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1383ignored.
96e4d5b1 1384
1385=item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1386
8903cb82 1387(F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
fb73857a 1388(W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1389ignored.
96e4d5b1 1390
a0d0e21e 1391=item ioctl is not implemented
1392
1393(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1394strange for a machine that supports C.
1395
1396=item junk on end of regexp
1397
1398(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1399
1400=item Label not found for "last %s"
1401
1402(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1403loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1404See L<perlfunc/last>.
1405
1406=item Label not found for "next %s"
1407
1408(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1409that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1410L<perlfunc/last>.
1411
1412=item Label not found for "redo %s"
1413
1414(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1415that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1416L<perlfunc/last>.
1417
1418=item listen() on closed fd
1419
1420(W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1421the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1422
a0d0e21e 1423=item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1424
1425(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
e7ea3e70 1426doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 1427
1428=item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1429
1430(S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1431by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1432ended earlier on the current line.
1433
1434=item Misplaced _ in number
1435
1436(W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1437
1438=item Missing $ on loop variable
1439
8b1a09fc 1440(F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1441mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
a0d0e21e 1442one line to the next.
1443
1444=item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1445
1446(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1447"indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1448
748a9306 1449=item Missing operator before %s?
1450
1451(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1452found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1453
a0d0e21e 1454=item Missing right bracket
1455
1456(F) The lexer counted more opening curly brackets (braces) than closing ones.
1457As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you were last
1458editing.
1459
a0d0e21e 1460=item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1461
1462(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
5f05dabc 1463constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
a0d0e21e 1464catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1465
1466 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1467 mod(2);
1468
1469Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1470
54310121 1471=item Modification of noncreatable array value attempted, subscript %d
a0d0e21e 1472
1473(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1474subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1475backwards.
1476
54310121 1477=item Modification of noncreatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
a0d0e21e 1478
1479(F) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1480be created for some peculiar reason.
1481
1482=item Module name must be constant
1483
1484(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1485
1486=item msg%s not implemented
1487
1488(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1489
1490=item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1491
8b1a09fc 1492(W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1493like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1494
1495=item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1496
68dc0745 1497(W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1498If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1499it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1500provided for just this purpose.
a0d0e21e 1501
1502=item Negative length
1503
1504(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1505that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1506
1507=item nested *?+ in regexp
1508
5f05dabc 1509(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
a0d0e21e 1510things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1511
5f05dabc 1512Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
a0d0e21e 1513to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1514
1515=item No #! line
1516
1517(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1518even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1519
1520=item No %s allowed while running setuid
1521
1522(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1523script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1524another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1525See L<perlsec>.
1526
1527=item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1528
1529(F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1530
1531=item No comma allowed after %s
1532
1533(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1534allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1535Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1536
0a753a76 1537One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1538constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1539importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1540does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1541explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1542L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1543would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1544remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1545constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1546list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1547this error was triggered?
1548
748a9306 1549=item No command into which to pipe on command line
1550
1551(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
54310121 1552and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
748a9306 1553want to pipe the output from this command.
1554
a0d0e21e 1555=item No DB::DB routine defined
1556
1557(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1558but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1559didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1560statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1561automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1562right.
1563
1564=item No dbm on this machine
1565
1566(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
5f05dabc 1567supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
a0d0e21e 1568
1569=item No DBsub routine
1570
1571(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1572but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1573didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1574ordinary subroutine call.
1575
8b1a09fc 1576=item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
748a9306 1577
1578(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1579and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1580the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
748a9306 1581
8b1a09fc 1582=item No input file after E<lt> on command line
748a9306 1583
1584(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1585and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1586from which to read data for stdin.
748a9306 1587
8b1a09fc 1588=item No output file after E<gt> on command line
748a9306 1589
1590(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1591and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
54310121 1592where you wanted to redirect stdout.
748a9306 1593
8b1a09fc 1594=item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
748a9306 1595
1596(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1597and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1598name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
748a9306 1599
a0d0e21e 1600=item No Perl script found in input
1601
1602(F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1603with #! and containing the word "perl".
1604
1605=item No setregid available
1606
1607(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1608your system.
1609
1610=item No setreuid available
1611
1612(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1613your system.
1614
1615=item No space allowed after B<-I>
1616
1617(F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1618intervening space.
1619
57079c46 1620=item No such array field
1621
1622(F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1623not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1624array indices for that to work.
1625
f1192cee 1626=item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1627
1628(F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1629does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1630the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1631is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1632
748a9306 1633=item No such pipe open
1634
1635(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1636close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1637an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1638
a0d0e21e 1639=item No such signal: SIG%s
1640
1641(W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1642Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1643
1644=item Not a CODE reference
1645
1646(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1647subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1648use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1649See also L<perlref>.
1650
1651=item Not a format reference
1652
1653(F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1654format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1655
1656=item Not a GLOB reference
1657
55497cff 1658(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
a0d0e21e 1659a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1660something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1661what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1662
1663=item Not a HASH reference
1664
1665(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1666found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1667function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1668
1669=item Not a perl script
1670
1671(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1672even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1673mention perl.
1674
1675=item Not a SCALAR reference
1676
1677(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1678found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1679function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1680
1681=item Not a subroutine reference
1682
1683(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1684subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1685use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1686See also L<perlref>.
1687
e7ea3e70 1688=item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
a0d0e21e 1689
1690(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
8b1a09fc 1691doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 1692
1693=item Not an ARRAY reference
1694
1695(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1696found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1697function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1698
1699=item Not enough arguments for %s
1700
1701(F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1702
1703=item Not enough format arguments
1704
1705(W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1706See L<perlform>.
1707
1708=item Null filename used
1709
5f05dabc 1710(F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
a0d0e21e 1711that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1712
55497cff 1713=item Null picture in formline
1714
1715(F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1716specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1717supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1718
a0d0e21e 1719=item NULL OP IN RUN
1720
1721(P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1722
1723=item Null realloc
1724
1725(P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1726
1727=item NULL regexp argument
1728
5f05dabc 1729(P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
a0d0e21e 1730
1731=item NULL regexp parameter
1732
1733(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1734
fc36a67e 1735=item Number too long
1736
1737(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1738about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1739Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1740try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1741
1930e939 1742=item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
a0d0e21e 1743
1930e939 1744(S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
1745is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
a0d0e21e 1746
bbce6d69 1747=item Offset outside string
1748
1749(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
1750pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
1751The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
1752will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
1753
a0d0e21e 1754=item oops: oopsAV
1755
1756(S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1757
1758=item oops: oopsHV
1759
1760(S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1761
56f7f34b 1762=item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
44a8e56a 1763
e7ea3e70 1764(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
1765no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
1766terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
1767operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
1768true. See L<overload>.
44a8e56a 1769
748a9306 1770=item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
1771
1772(S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
1773expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
1774to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
1775For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
1776if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
1777
a0d0e21e 1778=item Out of memory for yacc stack
1779
1780(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
1781but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
1782
1b979e0a 1783=item Out of memory during request for %s
a0d0e21e 1784
55497cff 1785(X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
54310121 1786remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
eff9c6e2 1787
1788The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
1789depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
1790However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
1791an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
55497cff 1792error is trappable I<once>.
1793
1b979e0a 1794=item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
55497cff 1795
1796(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1797remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
1798the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
1799a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
1800
1b979e0a 1801=item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
1802
1803(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
1804is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
1805instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
1806
a0d0e21e 1807=item page overflow
1808
1809(W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
1810See L<perlform>.
1811
1812=item panic: ck_grep
1813
1814(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
1815
1816=item panic: ck_split
1817
1818(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
1819
1820=item panic: corrupt saved stack index
1821
1822(P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
1823are in the savestack.
1824
1825=item panic: die %s
1826
1827(P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
1828it wasn't an eval context.
1829
1830=item panic: do_match
1831
1832(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1833
1834=item panic: do_split
1835
1836(P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
1837
1838=item panic: do_subst
1839
1840(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1841
1842=item panic: do_trans
1843
1844(P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1845
c635e13b 1846=item panic: frexp
1847
1848(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
1849
a0d0e21e 1850=item panic: goto
1851
1852(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
1853and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
1854
1855=item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
1856
1857(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
1858
1859=item panic: INTERPCONCAT
1860
1861(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
1862
1863=item panic: last
1864
1865(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
1866it wasn't a block context.
1867
1868=item panic: leave_scope clearsv
1869
5f05dabc 1870(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
a0d0e21e 1871
1872=item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
1873
1874(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
1875invalid enum on the top of it.
1876
1877=item panic: malloc
1878
1879(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
1880
1881=item panic: mapstart
1882
1883(P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
1884
1885=item panic: null array
1886
1887(P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
1888
1889=item panic: pad_alloc
1890
1891(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1892and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1893
1894=item panic: pad_free curpad
1895
1896(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1897and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1898
1899=item panic: pad_free po
1900
1901(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
1902
1903=item panic: pad_reset curpad
1904
1905(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1906and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1907
1908=item panic: pad_sv po
1909
1910(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
1911
1912=item panic: pad_swipe curpad
1913
1914(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1915and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1916
1917=item panic: pad_swipe po
1918
1919(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
1920
1921=item panic: pp_iter
1922
1923(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
1924
1925=item panic: realloc
1926
1927(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
1928
1929=item panic: restartop
1930
1931(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
1932didn't supply the destination.
1933
1934=item panic: return
1935
1936(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
1937then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
1938
1939=item panic: scan_num
1940
1941(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
1942
1943=item panic: sv_insert
1944
1945(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
1946was string.
1947
1948=item panic: top_env
1949
6224f72b 1950(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
a0d0e21e 1951
1952=item panic: yylex
1953
1954(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
1955
7b8d334a 1956=item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
a0d0e21e 1957
1958(W) You said something like
1959
1960 my $foo, $bar = @_;
1961
1962when you meant
1963
1964 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
1965
1966Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
1967
1968=item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
1969
1970(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
1971than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
1972anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
1973
1974=item Permission denied
1975
1976(F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
1977
748a9306 1978=item pid %d not a child
1979
1980(W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
1981isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
1982perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
1983
a0d0e21e 1984=item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
1985
1986(F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
1987the BSD version, which takes a pid.
1988
bbce6d69 1989=item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
1990
774d564b 1991(W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
1992strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
1993as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
7b8d334a 1994parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
bbce6d69 1995
774d564b 1996You probably wrote something like this:
1997
54310121 1998 @list = qw(
774d564b 1999 a # a comment
bbce6d69 2000 b # another comment
774d564b 2001 );
bbce6d69 2002
2003when you should have written this:
2004
774d564b 2005 @list = qw(
54310121 2006 a
2007 b
774d564b 2008 );
2009
2010If you really want comments, build your list the
2011old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2012
2013 @list = (
2014 'a', # a comment
2015 'b', # another comment
2016 );
bbce6d69 2017
2018=item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2019
774d564b 2020(W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
68dc0745 2021aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
774d564b 2022delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2023used.)
bbce6d69 2024
54310121 2025You probably wrote something like this:
bbce6d69 2026
774d564b 2027 qw! a, b, c !;
2028
2029which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2030commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
bbce6d69 2031
774d564b 2032 qw! a b c !;
bbce6d69 2033
a0d0e21e 2034=item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2035
2036(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2037Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2038end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2039Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2040
2041=item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2042
2043(S) The old irregular construct
cb1a09d0 2044
a0d0e21e 2045 open FOO || die;
2046
2047is now misinterpreted as
2048
2049 open(FOO || die);
2050
68dc0745 2051because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2052and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2053put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2054instead of "||".
a0d0e21e 2055
2056=item print on closed filehandle %s
2057
2058(W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2059Check your logic flow.
2060
2061=item printf on closed filehandle %s
2062
2063(W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2064Check your logic flow.
2065
2066=item Probable precedence problem on %s
2067
54310121 2068(W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
a0d0e21e 2069which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2070last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2071
2072 open FOO || die;
2073
3fe9a6f1 2074=item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4633a7c4 2075
3fe9a6f1 2076(S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2077or defined with a different function prototype.
4633a7c4 2078
89ea2908 2079=item Range iterator outside integer range
2080
2081(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2082are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2083One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2084increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2085
8b1a09fc 2086=item Read on closed filehandle E<lt>%sE<gt>
a0d0e21e 2087
2088(W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2089Check your logic flow.
2090
2091=item Reallocation too large: %lx
2092
54310121 2093(F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
a0d0e21e 2094
2095=item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2096
2097(F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2098desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2099which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2100
3e0ccd42 2101=item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
a0d0e21e 2102
2103(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2104an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2105
3e0ccd42 2106=item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2107
2108(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2109method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2110
1930e939 2111=item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2112
2113(W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2114an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2115usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2116to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
7b8d334a 2117
2118 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2119 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2120 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2121 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2122
a0d0e21e 2123=item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2124
2125(W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2126reference count of other than 1.
2127
fb73857a 2128=item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2129
2130(F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2131could match an empty string.
2132
a0d0e21e 2133=item regexp memory corruption
2134
2135(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2136expression compiler gave it.
2137
2138=item regexp out of space
2139
2140(P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2141
2142=item regexp too big
2143
2ba9eb46 2144(F) The current implementation of regular expressions uses shorts as
a0d0e21e 2145address offsets within a string. Unfortunately this means that if
2146the regular expression compiles to longer than 32767, it'll blow up.
2147Usually when you want a regular expression this big, there is a better
2148way to do it with multiple statements. See L<perlre>.
2149
2150=item Reversed %s= operator
2151
2152(W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2153comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2154
2155=item Runaway format
2156
2157(F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2158produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2159199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2160themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2161shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2162
2163=item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2164
a6006777 2165(W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
a0d0e21e 2166an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
8b1a09fc 2167The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2168assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
a0d0e21e 2169like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
5f05dabc 2170subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
a0d0e21e 2171
748a9306 2172On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
5f05dabc 2173element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
748a9306 2174Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2175L<perlref>.
2176
a6006777 2177=item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2178
2179(W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2180a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2181The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2182assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2183like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2184subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2185
2186On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2187element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2188Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2189L<perlref>.
2190
a0d0e21e 2191=item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2192
54310121 2193(F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2194or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
a0d0e21e 2195
2196=item Search pattern not terminated
2197
2198(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2199construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 2200Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2201
96e4d5b1 2202=item %sseek() on unopened file
a0d0e21e 2203
96e4d5b1 2204(W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2205was either never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e 2206
2207=item select not implemented
2208
2209(F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2210
2211=item sem%s not implemented
2212
2213(F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2214
2215=item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2216
2217(S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2218that had previously been marked as free.
2219
2220=item Semicolon seems to be missing
2221
2222(W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2223or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2224
2225=item Send on closed socket
2226
2227(W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2228Check your logic flow.
2229
1b1626e4 2230=item Sequence (? incomplete
7b8d334a 2231
1b1626e4 2232(F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2233See L<perlre>.
2234
a0d0e21e 2235=item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2236
2237(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
5f05dabc 2238parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 2239
2240=item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2241
2242(F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2243but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2244
2245=item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2246
2247(F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2248See L<perlre>.
2249
a5f75d66 2250=item Server error
2251
9607fc9c 2252Also known as "500 Server error".
2253
2254B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2255
2256You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2257CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2258tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2259from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2260server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2261for more information:
2262
2263 http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/idiots-guide.html
2264 http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/perl-cgi-faq.html
2265 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2266 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2267 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
a5f75d66 2268
a0d0e21e 2269=item setegid() not implemented
2270
8b1a09fc 2271(F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2272the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2273think so.
2274
2275=item seteuid() not implemented
2276
8b1a09fc 2277(F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2278the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2279think so.
2280
2281=item setrgid() not implemented
2282
8b1a09fc 2283(F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2284the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2285think so.
2286
2287=item setruid() not implemented
2288
1f8d2005 2289(F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2290the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2291think so.
2292
2293=item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2294
2295(F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2296because the world might have written on it already.
2297
2298=item shm%s not implemented
2299
2300(F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2301
2302=item shutdown() on closed fd
2303
2304(W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2305
f86702cc 2306=item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
a0d0e21e 2307
2308(W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2309put it into the wrong package?
2310
2311=item sort is now a reserved word
2312
2313(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2314But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2315
2316=item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2317
2318(F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
4633a7c4 2319it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
a0d0e21e 2320See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2321
2322=item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2323
2324(F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2325or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2326
2327=item Split loop
2328
2329(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2330more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2331See L<perlfunc/split>.
2332
8b1a09fc 2333=item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
a0d0e21e 2334
2335(W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
54310121 2336on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e 2337
2338=item Statement unlikely to be reached
2339
2340(W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2341This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2342there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2343which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2344by itself.
2345
e7ea3e70 2346=item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2347
2348(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2349Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2350may break this.
2351
a0d0e21e 2352=item Subroutine %s redefined
2353
2354(W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2355
2356 {
2357 local $^W = 0;
2358 eval "sub name { ... }";
2359 }
2360
56f7f34b 2361=item Subroutine %s hidden by keyword; use ampersand
2362
2363(W) You are trying to call a subroutine that has the same name as a
2364keyword. However, because the subroutine is not imported and
2365you're not using an ampersand, Perl won't call the subroutine.
2366
2367To force a subroutine call, either put an ampersand before the
2368subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package. Alternatively,
2369you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's imported with the
2370C<use subs> pragma).
2371
2372If the Perl operator is what you want, then eliminate this warning by
2373using the CORE:: prefix on the operator (e.g. CORE::log($x)) or by
2374declaring the subroutine to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
2375
a0d0e21e 2376=item Substitution loop
2377
2378(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2379substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
68dc0745 2380input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
5f05dabc 2381L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
a0d0e21e 2382
2383=item Substitution pattern not terminated
2384
2385(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2386construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 2387Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2388
2389=item Substitution replacement not terminated
2390
2391(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2392construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 2393Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2394
2395=item substr outside of string
2396
3e3baf6d 2397(S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2398string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2399length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2400mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2401of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
a0d0e21e 2402
f86702cc 2403=item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
a0d0e21e 2404
2405(F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2406version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2407
2408=item syntax error
2409
2410(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2411
2412 A keyword is misspelled.
2413 A semicolon is missing.
2414 A comma is missing.
2415 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2416 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2417 A closing quote is missing.
2418
2419Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2420error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2421The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2422it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
5f05dabc 2423before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
a0d0e21e 2424Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2425the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2426C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2427if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2428
cb1a09d0 2429=item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2430
8b1a09fc 2431(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
3a52c276 2432instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
cb1a09d0 2433into Perl yourself.
2434
a0d0e21e 2435=item System V IPC is not implemented on this machine
2436
5f05dabc 2437(F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem", "shm",
a0d0e21e 2438or "msg". See L<perlfunc/semctl>, for example.
2439
2440=item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2441
2442(W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2443Check your logic flow.
2444
fc36a67e 2445=item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2446
2447(F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2448nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2449
8903cb82 2450=item tell() on unopened file
a0d0e21e 2451
8903cb82 2452(W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2453never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e 2454
8b1a09fc 2455=item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
a0d0e21e 2456
2457(W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2458open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2459
2460=item That use of $[ is unsupported
2461
8b1a09fc 2462(F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
5f05dabc 2463a compiler directive. You may say only one of
a0d0e21e 2464
2465 $[ = 0;
2466 $[ = 1;
2467 ...
2468 local $[ = 0;
2469 local $[ = 1;
2470 ...
2471
2472This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2473out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2474
2475=item The %s function is unimplemented
2476
2477The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2478to the probings of Configure.
2479
f86702cc 2480=item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
a0d0e21e 2481
2482(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2483probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
8b1a09fc 2484think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
a0d0e21e 2485will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2486will deny it.
2487
2488=item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2489
2490(F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2491if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2492the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2493
2494=item times not implemented
2495
2496(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2497you're not running on Unix.
2498
2499=item Too few args to syscall
2500
2501(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2502system call to call, silly dilly.
2503
9607fc9c 2504=item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2505
2506(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
8cc95fdb 2507B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2508This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2509script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2510So Perl gives up.
f86702cc 2511
9607fc9c 2512If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2513mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2514by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2515first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
f86702cc 2516
9607fc9c 2517If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2518B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
f86702cc 2519
8cc95fdb 2520=item Too late for "-%s" option
2521
2522(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2523B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2524are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2525
cb1a09d0 2526=item Too many ('s
2527
2528=item Too many )'s
2529
2530(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 2531of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2532Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 2533
a0d0e21e 2534=item Too many args to syscall
2535
5f05dabc 2536(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
a0d0e21e 2537
2538=item Too many arguments for %s
2539
2540(F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2541
2542=item trailing \ in regexp
2543
2544(F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2545it. See L<perlre>.
2546
2c268ad5 2547=item Transliteration pattern not terminated
a0d0e21e 2548
2549(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
fb73857a 2550or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2551C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2552
2c268ad5 2553=item Transliteration replacement not terminated
a0d0e21e 2554
2555(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2556construct.
2557
2558=item truncate not implemented
2559
2560(F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2561Configure knows about.
2562
2563=item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2564
2565(F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
8b1a09fc 2566certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2567%NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
a0d0e21e 2568{EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2569
2570=item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2571
5f05dabc 2572(W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal literals
a0d0e21e 2573always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2574
4633a7c4 2575=item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2576
2577(F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2578
a0d0e21e 2579=item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2580
2581(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2582contexts were entered and left.
2583
2584=item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2585
2586(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2587values were temporarily localized.
2588
2589=item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2590
2591(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2592were entered and left.
2593
2594=item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2595
2596(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2597scalars were allocated and freed.
2598
2599=item Undefined format "%s" called
2600
2601(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2602another package? See L<perlform>.
2603
2604=item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2605
2606(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2607it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2608
2609=item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2610
2611(F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2612has since been undefined.
2613
2614=item Undefined subroutine called
2615
2616(F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2617or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2618
2619=item Undefined subroutine in sort
2620
2621(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2622have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2623
4633a7c4 2624=item Undefined top format "%s" called
2625
2626(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2627another package? See L<perlform>.
2628
20408e3c 2629=item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2630
2631(W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2632This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2633
a0d0e21e 2634=item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2635
2636(F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2637representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2638
2639=item Unknown BYTEORDER
2640
5f05dabc 2641(F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
a0d0e21e 2642
2643=item unmatched () in regexp
2644
2645(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2646expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
5f05dabc 2647the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 2648
2649=item Unmatched right bracket
2650
2651(F) The lexer counted more closing curly brackets (braces) than opening
2652ones, so you're probably missing an opening bracket. As a general
2653rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place you were
2654last editing.
2655
2656=item unmatched [] in regexp
2657
2658(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2659include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2660See L<perlre>.
2661
2662=item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2663
54310121 2664(W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
a0d0e21e 2665It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2666an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2667
54310121 2668=item Unrecognized character %s
a0d0e21e 2669
54310121 2670(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2671in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2672script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
a0d0e21e 2673
2674=item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2675
2676(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2677Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2678
90248788 2679=item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
a0d0e21e 2680
2681(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2682(If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
2683supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
2684
2685=item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
2686
2687(W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
2688failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
54310121 2689because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
a0d0e21e 2690
2691=item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
2692
2693(F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
2694
54310121 2695=item Unsupported function fork
2696
2697(F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
2698
2699Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
2700Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
2701the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
2702
a0d0e21e 2703=item Unsupported function %s
2704
7b8d334a 2705(F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
a0d0e21e 2706At least, Configure doesn't think so.
2707
2708=item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
2709
2710(F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
2711least that's what Configure thought.
2712
8b1a09fc 2713=item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
a0d0e21e 2714
2715(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2716a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
2717finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
2718the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2719
5cd24f17 2720=item Use of "$$<digit>" to mean "${$}<digit>" is deprecated
2721
2722(D) Perl versions before 5.004 misinterpreted any type marker followed
2723by "$" and a digit. For example, "$$0" was incorrectly taken to mean
2724"${$}0" instead of "${$0}". This bug is (mostly) fixed in Perl 5.004.
2725
2726However, the developers of Perl 5.004 could not fix this bug completely,
2727because at least two widely-used modules depend on the old meaning of
2728"$$0" in a string. So Perl 5.004 still interprets "$$<digit>" in the
2729old (broken) way inside strings; but it generates this message as a
2730warning. And in Perl 5.005, this special treatment will cease.
2731
a0d0e21e 2732=item Use of $# is deprecated
2733
8b1a09fc 2734(D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
a0d0e21e 2735Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
2736
2737=item Use of $* is deprecated
2738
4a6725af 2739(D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
a0d0e21e 2740you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
2741use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
2742action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
2743
748a9306 2744=item Use of %s in printf format not supported
2745
5f05dabc 2746(F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
2747only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
748a9306 2748
8b1a09fc 2749=item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
4633a7c4 2750
2751(D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3fe9a6f1 2752wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4633a7c4 2753
a0d0e21e 2754=item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
2755
2756(D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
2757subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
2758a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
2759
dc848c6f 2760=item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
2761
5cd24f17 2762(D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
2763up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
2764be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
7b8d334a 2765as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
dc848c6f 2766
2767This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
2768only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
2769of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
2770interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
2771use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
2772
2773The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
2774non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
2775depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
2776C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
2777
fb73857a 2778In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
2779should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
7b8d334a 2780C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
fb73857a 2781
85b81015 2782=item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
2783
2784(D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
2785may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
2786the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
2787different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
2788names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
2789e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
2790
dc848c6f 2791=item Use of %s is deprecated
2792
2793(D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
2794because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
2795bad side effects.
2796
a0d0e21e 2797=item Use of uninitialized value
2798
2799(W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
2800interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
2801warning assign an initial value to your variables.
2802
2803=item Useless use of %s in void context
2804
2805(W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
2806with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
2807from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
2808this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
2809your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
2810if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
2811
2812 $one, $two = 1, 2;
2813
2814when you meant to say
2815
2816 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
2817
748a9306 2818Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
2819reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
2820example, if you say
2821
2822 $array = (1,2);
2823
2824when you should have said
2825
2826 $array = [1,2];
2827
2828The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
2829while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
2830a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
2831throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
2832L<perlref> for more on this.
2833
55497cff 2834=item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
2835
2836(W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
2837valid when C<untie> was called.
2838
68dc0745 2839=item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
a6006777 2840
68dc0745 2841(W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
2842or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
2843value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
2844probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
2845expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
a6006777 2846
9607fc9c 2847=item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4633a7c4 2848
2849(F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
2850that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
2851something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
2852by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
2853on the front of your variable.
2854
44a8e56a 2855=item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
2856
2857(W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
2858subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
2859(innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
2860the outermost subroutine. For example:
2861
2862 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
2863
2864If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
2865indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
2866as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
2867referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
2868the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
2869*first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
2870you want.
2871
2872In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
2873subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
2874support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
2875subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
2876
2877=item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
2878
2879(W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
2880variable defined in an outer subroutine.
2881
2882When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
2883the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
2884*first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
2885call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
2886subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
2887other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
2888
2889Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
2890lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
2891will I<never> share the given variable.
2892
2893This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
2894anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
2895reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
54310121 2896they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
44a8e56a 2897variables.
2898
f86702cc 2899=item Variable syntax
cb1a09d0 2900
2901(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 2902of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2903Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 2904
3e6e419a 2905=item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2906
2907(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2908
2909 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2910 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2911 LC_ALL = "En_US",
2912 LANG = (unset)
2913 are supported and installed on your system.
2914 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2915
2916Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2917settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2918This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
2919administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
2920not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
2921is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
2922script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
2923will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
2924fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2925
7e1af8bc 2926=item Warning: something's wrong
5f05dabc 2927
2928(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
2929you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
2930
f86702cc 2931=item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
a0d0e21e 2932
8b1a09fc 2933(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
5f05dabc 2934close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
a0d0e21e 2935
5f05dabc 2936=item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
a0d0e21e 2937
2938(S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
2939binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
2940unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
2941has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
2942
2943 rand + 5;
2944
2945you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
2946
2947 rand() + 5;
2948
2949but in actual fact, you got
2950
2951 rand(+5);
2952
5f05dabc 2953So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
a0d0e21e 2954
2955=item Write on closed filehandle
2956
2957(W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2958Check your logic flow.
2959
2960=item X outside of string
2961
2962(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
2963the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2964
2965=item x outside of string
2966
2967(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
2968the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2969
2970=item Xsub "%s" called in sort
2971
2972(F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
2973
2974=item Xsub called in sort
2975
2976(F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
2977
2978=item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
2979
2980(F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
2981already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
2982Use a filename instead.
2983
2984=item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
2985
5f05dabc 2986(F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
a0d0e21e 2987sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
2988about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
2989the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
2990
2991=item You need to quote "%s"
2992
2993(W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
2994already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
2995will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
2996probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
2997
2998=item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
2999
3000(W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3001Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3002See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3003
3004=item \1 better written as $1
3005
3006(W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
5f05dabc 3007of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
a0d0e21e 3008substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3009because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3010if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3011
8b1a09fc 3012=item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
748a9306 3013
3014(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3015found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
8b1a09fc 3016'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
748a9306 3017
8b1a09fc 3018=item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
748a9306 3019
3020(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3021thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3022command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3023from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3024streams, such as
3025
3026 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3027 while (<STDIN>) {
3028 print;
3029 print OUT;
3030 }
3031 close OUT;
3032
774d564b 3033=item Got an error from DosAllocMem
33c8a3fe 3034
774d564b 3035(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3036version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
33c8a3fe 3037
3038=item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3039
dc848c6f 3040(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
33c8a3fe 3041
3042 prefix1;prefix2
3043
3044or
3045
3046 prefix1 prefix2
3047
dc848c6f 3048with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3049of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3050may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3051"PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
33c8a3fe 3052
3053=item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3054
54310121 3055(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
dc848c6f 3056C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
33c8a3fe 3057
3058=item Process terminated by SIG%s
3059
3060(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
dc848c6f 3061applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3062port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3063L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3064in F<README.os2>.
33c8a3fe 3065
a0d0e21e 3066=back
3067