applied suggested patch; added missing prototype changes to
[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
9fbbe825 36=item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
2ba9eb46 37
9fbbe825 38(W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
39effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
40always a 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
f61d411c 54=item '!' allowed only after types %s
ef54e1a4 55
f61d411c 56(F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
57See L<perlfunc/pack>.
ef54e1a4 58
43192e07 59=item # cannot take a count
60
61(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
62but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
63See L<perlfunc/pack>.
64
65=item # must be followed by a, A or Z
66
67(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
68which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
69to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
70See L<perlfunc/pack>.
71
72=item # must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
73
74(F) You had an pack template indicating a counted-length string,
75Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
76See L<perlfunc/pack>.
77
78=item # must follow a numeric type
79
80(F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
81but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
82See L<perlfunc/pack>.
83
a0d0e21e 84=item % may only be used in unpack
85
5f05dabc 86(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
a0d0e21e 87checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
88way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
89
c9f97d15 90=item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
91
92(W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
93by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
94C<'>-delimited regular expression.
95
a0d0e21e 96=item %s (...) interpreted as function
97
98(W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
8b1a09fc 99by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
5f05dabc 100found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
a0d0e21e 101
76cd736e 102=item %s() called too early to check prototype
103
104(W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
105definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
106conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
107declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
108definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
109if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
110an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
111
a0d0e21e 112=item %s argument is not a HASH element
113
5f05dabc 114(F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
a0d0e21e 115
116 $foo{$bar}
117 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
118
5f05dabc 119=item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
120
121(F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
122
123 $foo{$bar}
124 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
125
126or a hash slice, such as
127
128 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
129 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
130
a0d0e21e 131=item %s did not return a true value
132
133(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
134it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
135traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
136do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
137
138=item %s found where operator expected
139
140(S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
141sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
142it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
143delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
144
f86702cc 145=item %s had compilation errors
a0d0e21e 146
147(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
148
f86702cc 149=item %s has too many errors
a0d0e21e 150
151(F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
152Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
153
154=item %s matches null string many times
155
156(W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
157regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
158
159=item %s never introduced
160
161(S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
162before it could possibly have been used.
163
164=item %s syntax OK
165
166(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
167
f86702cc 168=item %s: Command not found
cb1a09d0 169
170(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 171of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
172Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 173
f86702cc 174=item %s: Expression syntax
cb1a09d0 175
176(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 177of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
178Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 179
f86702cc 180=item %s: Undefined variable
cb1a09d0 181
182(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 183of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
184Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 185
186=item %s: not found
187
8b1a09fc 188(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
3a52c276 189instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
cb1a09d0 190into Perl yourself.
191
a99e4ac2 192=item (in cleanup) %s
193
194(W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
195the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
196the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
197number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
198of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
199repeated.
200
201Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
202could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
203
702d120d 204=item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
205
206(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
207found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
208the previous line just because you saw this message.
209
a0d0e21e 210=item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
211
212(F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
213which provides a race condition that breaks security.
214
215=item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
216
217(F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
218know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
219
08e9d68e 220=item C<-p> destination: %s
221
222(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
223command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
224redirected it with select().)
225
a5f75d66 226=item 500 Server error
227
228See Server error.
229
a0d0e21e 230=item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
231
232(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
233if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
234
235=item @ outside of string
236
2ba9eb46 237(F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
a0d0e21e 238the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
239
742c16d1 240=item <> should be quotes
241
242(F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
243C<require 'file'>.
244
a0d0e21e 245=item accept() on closed fd
246
247(W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
248the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
249
250=item Allocation too large: %lx
251
54310121 252(X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
55497cff 253
2ae324a7 254=item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
255
2c268ad5 256(W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
2ae324a7 257operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
258or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
259length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
260that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
261L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
262
a0d0e21e 263=item Arg too short for msgsnd
264
265(F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
266
748a9306 267=item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
268
269(W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
270you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
5f05dabc 271a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
748a9306 272
5315574d 273=item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
274
275(W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
276and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
277other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
278not imported.
279
280To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
281before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
282Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
283imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
284
285To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
286on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
287to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
288
a0d0e21e 289=item Args must match #! line
290
291(F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
3a52c276 292with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
293impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
294for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
a0d0e21e 295
f86702cc 296=item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
a0d0e21e 297
298(W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
299expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
300will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
301
302=item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
303
304(D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
305is now heavily deprecated.
306
307=item assertion botched: %s
308
309(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
310
311=item Assertion failed: file "%s"
312
313(P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
314
315=item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
316
317(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
318must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
319know which context to supply to the right side.
320
321=item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
322
323(P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
324be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
325of those arenas.
326
54310121 327=item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
bbce6d69 328
329(P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
330optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
331indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
332that can no longer be found in the table.
333
a0d0e21e 334=item Attempt to free temp prematurely
335
336(W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
337routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
338the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
339routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
340it.
341
342=item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
343
344(P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
345
346=item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
347
348(W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
349would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
350and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
351could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
352SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
353when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
354
dcdda58d 355=item Attempt to join self
356
357(F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
358impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
359need to move the join() to some other thread.
360
84902520 361=item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
362
363(W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
364function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
365means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
366invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
367literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
368avoid this warning.
369
b7a902f4 370=item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
371
372(W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
8b1a09fc 373as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
b7a902f4 374dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
375
a0d0e21e 376=item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
377
378(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
2ba9eb46 379shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
5f05dabc 380S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
a0d0e21e 381S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
382
a0d0e21e 383=item Bad filehandle: %s
384
385(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
386has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
387did it in another package.
388
389=item Bad free() ignored
390
391(S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
33c8a3fe 392malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
393setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
394
395This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
396"hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
397C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
398system malloc().
a0d0e21e 399
aa689395 400=item Bad hash
401
402(P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
403
f1192cee 404=item Bad index while coercing array into hash
405
6f54a448 406(F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
407pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
408See L<perlref>.
57079c46 409
a0d0e21e 410=item Bad name after %s::
411
412(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
413finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
414so
415
416 $var = 'myvar';
417 $sym = mypack::$var;
418
419is not the same as
420
421 $var = 'myvar';
422 $sym = "mypack::$var";
423
424=item Bad symbol for array
425
426(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
427wasn't a symbol table entry.
428
429=item Bad symbol for filehandle
430
431(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
432wasn't a symbol table entry.
433
434=item Bad symbol for hash
435
436(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
437wasn't a symbol table entry.
438
8b1a09fc 439=item Badly placed ()'s
cb1a09d0 440
441(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 442of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
443Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 444
3fe9a6f1 445=item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
446
447(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
d98d5fff 448subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
54310121 449Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
3fe9a6f1 450
c3e0f903 451=item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
452
453(W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
454the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
455Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
456
a0d0e21e 457=item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
458
459(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
460Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
461
68dc0745 462=item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
463
464(F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
465implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
466already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
467could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
468likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
469
a0d0e21e 470=item bind() on closed fd
471
472(W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
473the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
474
4633a7c4 475=item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
476
477(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
478
f675dbe5 479=item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
480
481(W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
482%ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
483so it was truncated to the string shown.
484
a0d0e21e 485=item Callback called exit
486
487(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
488exited by calling exit.
489
0a753a76 490=item Can't "goto" outside a block
491
492(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
493like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
494occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
495is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
496
84902520 497=item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
498
499(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
500foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
501
a0d0e21e 502=item Can't "last" outside a block
503
504(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
505except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
506current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
0a753a76 507"loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
508the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
509will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
a0d0e21e 510
511=item Can't "next" outside a block
512
513(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
514there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
0a753a76 515count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
516usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
54310121 517curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
a0d0e21e 518
f675dbe5 519=item Can't read CRTL environ
520
521(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
522from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
523missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
524or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
525
a0d0e21e 526=item Can't "redo" outside a block
527
528(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
529there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
0a753a76 530count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
531usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
54310121 532curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
a0d0e21e 533
534=item Can't bless non-reference value
535
536(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
537encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
538
539=item Can't break at that line
540
54310121 541(S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
a0d0e21e 542the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
543be stopped at.
544
545=item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
546
547(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
548functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
549in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
550
551=item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
552
54310121 553(F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
a0d0e21e 554ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
555you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
556an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
557
558=item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
559
560(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
561object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
72b5445b 562a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
563Something like this will reproduce the error:
564
565 $BADREF = 42;
566 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
567 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
568
569=item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
570
571(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
572object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
a0d0e21e 573Something like this will reproduce the error:
574
575 $BADREF = undef;
576 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
577 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
578
579=item Can't chdir to %s
580
581(F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
582that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
583
104d25b7 584=item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
585
586(P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
587
a0d0e21e 588=item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
589
590(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 591(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
a0d0e21e 592say things like:
593
594 *foo += 1;
595
596You CAN say
597
598 $foo = *foo;
599 $foo += 1;
600
601but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
602
603=item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
604
605(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 606(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
a0d0e21e 607
608=item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
609
610(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 611(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
a0d0e21e 612
57079c46 613=item Can't coerce array into hash
614
615(F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
616information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
617only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
618
a0d0e21e 619=item Can't create pipe mailbox
620
748a9306 621(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
622or other plumbing problems.
a0d0e21e 623
624=item Can't declare %s in my
625
5f05dabc 626(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
a0d0e21e 627They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
628
629=item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
630
631(S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
632
54310121 633=item Can't do inplace edit without backup
a0d0e21e 634
54310121 635(F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
3fe9a6f1 636from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
a0d0e21e 637such.
638
8b1a09fc 639=item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
a0d0e21e 640
641(S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
642
643=item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
644
645(S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
646/dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
647
648=item Can't do setegid!
649
650(P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
651of suidperl.
652
653=item Can't do seteuid!
654
655(P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
656
657=item Can't do setuid
658
659(F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
660do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
661form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
662under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
663If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
664your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
665
666=item Can't do waitpid with flags
667
668(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
669without flags is emulated.
670
8b1a09fc 671=item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
a0d0e21e 672
673(F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
674your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
675
676=item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
677
678(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
679For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
680
681=item Can't exec "%s": %s
682
5f05dabc 683(W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
a0d0e21e 684program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
685were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
686executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
687#! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
688similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
689
690=item Can't exec %s
691
692(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
693what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
694mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
695
696=item Can't execute %s
697
2a92aaa0 698(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
699in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
700
701=item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
702
703(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
704in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
705exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
706
707=item Can't find %s on PATH
708
a0d0e21e 709(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
2a92aaa0 710in the PATH.
a0d0e21e 711
712=item Can't find label %s
713
714(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
715for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
716
717=item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
718
719(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
5f05dabc 720the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
a0d0e21e 721levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
722
fb73857a 723 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
724
725If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
726included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
727programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
a0d0e21e 728
729=item Can't fork
730
731(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
732
748a9306 733=item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
734
735(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
736access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
737access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
738that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
739assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
740it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
741retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
742but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
5f05dabc 743routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
748a9306 744appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
745returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
746knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
747see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
748code takes stat buffers lightly.)
749
a0d0e21e 750=item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
751
748a9306 752(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
753can't retrieve its name for later use.
a0d0e21e 754
755=item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
756
748a9306 757(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
758mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
a0d0e21e 759
760=item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
761
762(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
763call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
5f05dabc 764you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
a0d0e21e 765L<perlfunc/goto>.
766
b150fb22 767=item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
768
769(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
770(You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
771
706a304b 772=item Can't localize through a reference
4633a7c4 773
706a304b 774(F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
775handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
776pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
777sure that $ref will still be a reference.
4633a7c4 778
748a9306 779=item Can't localize lexical variable %s
780
2ba9eb46 781(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
748a9306 782lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
783localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
784package name.
785
0ebe0038 786=item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
787
788(F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
789a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
790you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
791element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
792
4727527e 793=item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
794
795(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
796but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
797in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
798doing C<make install>.
799
ec889f3a 800=item Can't locate %s
801
802(F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
803found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
804unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
805to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
806library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
807maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
808and L<lib>.
a0d0e21e 809
810=item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
811
812(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
813functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
2ba9eb46 814method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
a0d0e21e 815
816=item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
817
818(W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
819to exist.
820
3e3baf6d 821=item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
822
823(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
824
a0d0e21e 825=item Can't modify %s in %s
826
827(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
5f05dabc 828change it, such as with an auto-increment.
a0d0e21e 829
54310121 830=item Can't modify nonexistent substring
a0d0e21e 831
832(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
833a NULL.
834
5f05dabc 835=item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
a0d0e21e 836
5f05dabc 837(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
a0d0e21e 838buffer.
839
840=item Can't open %s: %s
841
08e9d68e 842(S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
843filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
844switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
845is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
846on the command line.
a0d0e21e 847
848=item Can't open bidirectional pipe
849
850(W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
851try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
7e1af8bc 852IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
a0d0e21e 853and then read it in under a different file handle.
854
748a9306 855=item Can't open error file %s as stderr
856
857(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
8b1a09fc 858couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
859command line for writing.
748a9306 860
861=item Can't open input file %s as stdin
862
863(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
8b1a09fc 864couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
748a9306 865
866=item Can't open output file %s as stdout
867
868(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
8b1a09fc 869couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
870line for writing.
748a9306 871
872=item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
873
874(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
875couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
876
a0d0e21e 877=item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
878
879(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
880
7bac28a0 881=item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
882
883(F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
884pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
885was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
886this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
887
a0d0e21e 888=item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
889
890(S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
891you don't have write permission to the directory.
892
748a9306 893=item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
894
895(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
896reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
897
a0d0e21e 898=item Can't reswap uid and euid
899
900(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
901of suidperl.
902
903=item Can't return outside a subroutine
904
905(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
906there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
907
908=item Can't stat script "%s"
909
910(P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
911it open already. Bizarre.
912
913=item Can't swap uid and euid
914
915(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
916of suidperl.
917
918=item Can't take log of %g
919
fb73857a 920(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
921negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
922standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
923the negative numbers.
a0d0e21e 924
925=item Can't take sqrt of %g
926
927(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
fb73857a 928negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
929with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
a0d0e21e 930
931=item Can't undef active subroutine
932
933(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
934however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
935redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
936
937=item Can't unshift
938
939(F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
940as the main Perl stack.
941
942=item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
943
944(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
945it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
946so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
947message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
948
949=item Can't upgrade to undef
950
951(P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
952of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
953code calling sv_upgrade.
954
1d2dff63 955=item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
956
957(F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
958Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
959provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
960
c07a80fd 961=item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
962
963(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
8b1a09fc 964You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
c07a80fd 965and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
966Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
967lexical variable.
968
e9fa98b2 969=item Bad evalled substitution pattern
970
971(F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
972substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
973most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
974
a0d0e21e 975=item Can't use %s for loop variable
976
977(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
978
979=item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
980
981(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
982reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
983test the type of the reference, if need be.
984
748a9306 985=item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
986
987(W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
988a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
5f05dabc 989to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
748a9306 990Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
991out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
992
44a8e56a 993=item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
994
995(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
996are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
997
748a9306 998=item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
a0d0e21e 999
1000(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1001are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1002
1003=item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1004
1005(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
54310121 1006be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
a0d0e21e 1007
a0d0e21e 1008=item Can't use global %s in "my"
1009
1010(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
5f05dabc 1011not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
a0d0e21e 1012the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1013variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1014weren't.
1015
748a9306 1016=item Can't use subscript on %s
1017
1018(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1019subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1020didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1021
810b8aa5 1022=item Can't weaken a nonreference
1023
1024(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1025references can be weakened.
1026
5f05dabc 1027=item Can't x= to read-only value
a0d0e21e 1028
1029(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1030an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1031Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1032
3f4520fe 1033=item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
b6c543e3 1034
1035(F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1036there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1037
3f4520fe 1038=item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
e7ea3e70 1039
1040(F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1041opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1042package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1043
b8c5462f 1044=item Character class [:%s:] unknown
4599a1de 1045
b8c5462f 1046(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
4599a1de 1047
b8c5462f 1048=item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1049
1050(W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
644a2880 1051I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1052for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that the last two constructs
1053are not currently implemented, they are placeholders for future extensions.
b8c5462f 1054
644a2880 1055=item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
4599a1de 1056
1057(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
b8c5462f 1058with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
4599a1de 1059If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1060expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
b8c5462f 1061backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
4599a1de 1062
1063=item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1064
1065(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1066beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1067If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1068expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1069backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1070
a0d0e21e 1071=item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1072
1073(W) A novice will sometimes say
1074
1075 chmod 777, $filename
1076
1077not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1078to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1079
8b1a09fc 1080=item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
a0d0e21e 1081
1082(W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1083
7a2e2cd6 1084=item Compilation failed in require
1085
1086(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1087Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1088were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1089
c3464db5 1090=item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1091
1092(W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1093where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1094or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1095arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1096recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1097under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1098than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1099expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1100for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1101
a0d0e21e 1102=item connect() on closed fd
1103
1104(W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1105the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1106
779c5bc9 1107=item Constant is not %s reference
1108
1109(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1110is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1111message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1112indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1113See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1114
4cee8e80 1115=item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1116
1117(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1118inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1119workarounds.
1120
9607fc9c 1121=item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1122
1123(S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1124inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1125workarounds.
1126
e7ea3e70 1127=item Copy method did not return a reference
1128
1129(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1130
a0d0e21e 1131=item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1132
1133(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1134
1135=item corrupted regexp pointers
1136
1137(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1138expression compiler gave it.
1139
1140=item corrupted regexp program
1141
1142(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1143a valid magic number.
1144
1145=item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1146
1147(W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
3e3baf6d 1148times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
a0d0e21e 1149recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1150case it indicates something else.
1151
f10b0346 1152=item defined(@array) is deprecated
69794302 1153
1154(D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1155undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1156just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1157
f10b0346 1158=item defined(%hash) is deprecated
69794302 1159
1160(D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1161undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1162just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1163
fc36a67e 1164=item Delimiter for here document is too long
1165
1166(F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1167C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1168twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1169
4633a7c4 1170=item Did you mean &%s instead?
1171
1172(W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1173
748a9306 1174=item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
a0d0e21e 1175
748a9306 1176(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1177On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1178
7e1af8bc 1179=item Died
5f05dabc 1180
1181(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1182you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1183
54310121 1184=item Do you need to predeclare %s?
748a9306 1185
1186(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1187found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1188name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1189because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1190"sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1191referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1192to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1193can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1194declaration.
a0d0e21e 1195
1196=item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1197
1198(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1199
1200=item do_study: out of memory
1201
1202(P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1203
1204=item Duplicate free() ignored
1205
1206(S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1207been freed.
1208
4633a7c4 1209=item elseif should be elsif
1210
1211(S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1212ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1213named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1214unlikely to be what you want.
1215
a0d0e21e 1216=item END failed--cleanup aborted
1217
1218(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1219The interpreter is immediately exited.
1220
85ab1d1d 1221=item entering effective %s failed
5ff3f7a4 1222
85ab1d1d 1223(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
5ff3f7a4 1224effective uids or gids failed.
1225
748a9306 1226=item Error converting file specification %s
1227
5f05dabc 1228(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
748a9306 1229specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1230single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1231passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1232case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1233
e4d48cc9 1234=item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1235
1236(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1237that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1238See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1239
1240=item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1241
1242(F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1243but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1244in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1245
1246=item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1247
1248(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
3c247ff3 1249zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1250interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
e4d48cc9 1251If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1252from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1253See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1254
fc36a67e 1255=item Excessively long <> operator
1256
1257(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1258Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1259filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1260variable and glob that.
1261
f86702cc 1262=item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
a0d0e21e 1263
1264(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1265
1266=item Exiting eval via %s
1267
8b1a09fc 1268(W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
a0d0e21e 1269a goto, or a loop control statement.
1270
0a753a76 1271=item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1272
1273(W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1274subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1275statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1276
a0d0e21e 1277=item Exiting subroutine via %s
1278
8b1a09fc 1279(W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
a0d0e21e 1280a goto, or a loop control statement.
1281
1282=item Exiting substitution via %s
1283
8b1a09fc 1284(W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
a0d0e21e 1285a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1286
7b8d334a 1287=item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1288
1289(W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1290the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1291usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
ae6c4aac 1292package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
7b8d334a 1293
748a9306 1294=item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
a0d0e21e 1295
748a9306 1296(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1297service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1298filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1299the Perl source code is distressed.
a0d0e21e 1300
1301=item fcntl is not implemented
1302
1303(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1304PDP-11 or something?
1305
1306=item Filehandle %s never opened
1307
1308(W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1309You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1310the FileHandle package.
1311
af8c498a 1312=item Filehandle %s opened only for input
a0d0e21e 1313
1314(W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1315intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
8b1a09fc 1316"+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
5f05dabc 1317you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
8b1a09fc 1318L<perlfunc/open>.
a0d0e21e 1319
af8c498a 1320=item Filehandle %s opened only for output
a0d0e21e 1321
af8c498a 1322(W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
a0d0e21e 1323intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
8b1a09fc 1324"+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
af8c498a 1325you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
8b1a09fc 1326L<perlfunc/open>.
a0d0e21e 1327
1328=item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1329
1330(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1331a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1332that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1333the name.
1334
1335=item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1336
1337(F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1338a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1339that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1340the name.
1341
1342=item Format %s redefined
1343
1344(W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1345
1346 {
0453d815 1347 no warning;
a0d0e21e 1348 eval "format NAME =...";
1349 }
1350
1351=item Format not terminated
1352
1353(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1354to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1355
1356=item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1357
1358(W) You said
1359
1360 if ($foo = 123)
1361
1362when you meant
1363
1364 if ($foo == 123)
1365
1366(or something like that).
1367
1368=item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1369
1370(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1371
1372=item gethostent not implemented
1373
1374(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1375because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1376on the Internet.
1377
1378=item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1379
1380(W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1381Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1382
748a9306 1383=item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1384
1385(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1386C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1387
a0d0e21e 1388=item Glob not terminated
1389
1390(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1391a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1392finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1393the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1394
1395=item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1396
68dc0745 1397(F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1398must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
a0d0e21e 1399say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1400
1401=item goto must have label
1402
1403(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1404unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1405
1406=item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1407
1408(S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1409existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1410an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1411
1412=item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1413
1414(D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1415is now heavily deprecated.
1416
8903cb82 1417=item Identifier too long
1418
1419(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
fc36a67e 1420about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1421names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1422versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
8903cb82 1423
f675dbe5 1424=item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1425
1426(W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1427environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1428used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1429
1430=item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
a0d0e21e 1431
f675dbe5 1432(W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1433or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1434didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1435line was ignored.
a0d0e21e 1436
4fdae800 1437=item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1438
1439(F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1440error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
54310121 1441multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1442
1443Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
68dc0745 1444either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
54310121 1445transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
68dc0745 1446properly converting the text file format.
1447
1448Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1449text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1450handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1451
1452In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1453converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1454executed.
4fdae800 1455
a0d0e21e 1456=item Illegal division by zero
1457
1458(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1459logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1460
1461=item Illegal modulus zero
1462
1463(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1464don't take to this kindly.
1465
399388f4 1466=item Illegal binary digit %s
1467
1468(F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1469
1470=item Illegal octal digit %s
a0d0e21e 1471
1472(F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1473
399388f4 1474=item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1475
1476(W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1477Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1478
1479=item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
748a9306 1480
1481(W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1482of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1483
651978e7 1484=item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
6ff81951 1485
1486(W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F in a
1487hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1488before the illegal character.
1489
54310121 1490=item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1491
1492(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1493following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1494
9607fc9c 1495=item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1496
1497(F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1498array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1499used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1500instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1501indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1502program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1503that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1504
a0d0e21e 1505=item Insecure dependency in %s
1506
8b1a09fc 1507(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
a0d0e21e 1508The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1509or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1510labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1511who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1512used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1513for more information.
1514
1515=item Insecure directory in %s
1516
1517(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
8b1a09fc 1518script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
a0d0e21e 1519See L<perlsec>.
1520
62f468fc 1521=item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
a0d0e21e 1522
1523(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
62f468fc 1524setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1525C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
a0d0e21e 1526potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1527known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1528
a7ae9550 1529=item Integer overflow in %s number
1530
651978e7 1531(S) The literal hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1532is too big for your architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest
a7ae9550 1533literal hex, octal or binary number representable without overflow
1534is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or 0b11111111111111111111111111111111
1535respectively. Note that Perl transparently promotes decimal literals
1536to a floating point representation internally--subject to loss of
1537precision errors in subsequent operations--so this limit usually
1538doesn't apply to decimal literals.
bbce6d69 1539
748a9306 1540=item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1541
1542(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
5f05dabc 1543of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
2ba9eb46 1544whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
b687b08b 1545script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
748a9306 1546has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1547this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1548and execute the specified command.
1549
a0d0e21e 1550=item internal disaster in regexp
1551
1552(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1553
4eb79ab5 1554=item glob failed (%s)
1555
1556(W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1557and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1558pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1559status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1560coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1561you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1562have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1563C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1564C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1565In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1566rebuild Perl.
5cd24f17 1567
a0d0e21e 1568=item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1569
1570(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1571
1572=item invalid [] range in regexp
1573
1574(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1575greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1576
c635e13b 1577=item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1578
878e08df 1579(W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
c635e13b 1580See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1581
96e4d5b1 1582=item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1583
8903cb82 1584(F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
fb73857a 1585(W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1586ignored.
96e4d5b1 1587
1588=item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1589
8903cb82 1590(F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
fb73857a 1591(W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1592ignored.
96e4d5b1 1593
a0d0e21e 1594=item ioctl is not implemented
1595
1596(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1597strange for a machine that supports C.
1598
1599=item junk on end of regexp
1600
1601(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1602
1603=item Label not found for "last %s"
1604
1605(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1606loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1607See L<perlfunc/last>.
1608
1609=item Label not found for "next %s"
1610
1611(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1612that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1613L<perlfunc/last>.
1614
1615=item Label not found for "redo %s"
1616
1617(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1618that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1619L<perlfunc/last>.
1620
85ab1d1d 1621=item leaving effective %s failed
5ff3f7a4 1622
85ab1d1d 1623(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
5ff3f7a4 1624effective uids or gids failed.
1625
a0d0e21e 1626=item listen() on closed fd
1627
1628(W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1629the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1630
a0d0e21e 1631=item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1632
1633(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
e7ea3e70 1634doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 1635
1636=item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1637
1638(S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1639by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1640ended earlier on the current line.
1641
1642=item Misplaced _ in number
1643
1644(W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1645
1646=item Missing $ on loop variable
1647
8b1a09fc 1648(F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1649mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
a0d0e21e 1650one line to the next.
1651
1652=item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1653
1654(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1655"indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1656
06eaf0bc 1657=item Missing command in piped open
1658
1659(W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1660construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1661
748a9306 1662=item Missing operator before %s?
1663
1664(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1665found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1666
d98d5fff 1667=item Missing right curly or square bracket
a0d0e21e 1668
d98d5fff 1669(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1670closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1671you were last editing.
a0d0e21e 1672
a0d0e21e 1673=item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1674
1675(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
5f05dabc 1676constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
a0d0e21e 1677catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1678
1679 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1680 mod(2);
1681
1682Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1683
4fe4fdb3 1684=item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
a0d0e21e 1685
1686(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1687subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1688backwards.
1689
4fe4fdb3 1690=item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
a0d0e21e 1691
19a09eb8 1692(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
a0d0e21e 1693be created for some peculiar reason.
1694
1695=item Module name must be constant
1696
1697(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1698
1699=item msg%s not implemented
1700
1701(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1702
1703=item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1704
8b1a09fc 1705(W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1706like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1707
1708=item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1709
68dc0745 1710(W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1711If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1712it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1713provided for just this purpose.
a0d0e21e 1714
1715=item Negative length
1716
1717(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1718that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1719
1720=item nested *?+ in regexp
1721
5f05dabc 1722(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
a0d0e21e 1723things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1724
5f05dabc 1725Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
a0d0e21e 1726to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1727
1728=item No #! line
1729
1730(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1731even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1732
1733=item No %s allowed while running setuid
1734
1735(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1736script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1737another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1738See L<perlsec>.
1739
1740=item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1741
1742(F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1743
1744=item No comma allowed after %s
1745
1746(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1747allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1748Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1749
0a753a76 1750One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1751constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1752importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1753does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1754explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1755L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1756would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1757remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1758constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1759list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1760this error was triggered?
1761
748a9306 1762=item No command into which to pipe on command line
1763
1764(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
54310121 1765and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
748a9306 1766want to pipe the output from this command.
1767
a0d0e21e 1768=item No DB::DB routine defined
1769
1770(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1771but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1772didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1773statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1774automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1775right.
1776
1777=item No dbm on this machine
1778
1779(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
5f05dabc 1780supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
a0d0e21e 1781
1782=item No DBsub routine
1783
1784(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1785but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1786didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1787ordinary subroutine call.
1788
8b1a09fc 1789=item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
748a9306 1790
1791(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1792and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1793the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
748a9306 1794
8b1a09fc 1795=item No input file after E<lt> on command line
748a9306 1796
1797(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1798and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1799from which to read data for stdin.
748a9306 1800
8b1a09fc 1801=item No output file after E<gt> on command line
748a9306 1802
1803(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1804and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
54310121 1805where you wanted to redirect stdout.
748a9306 1806
8b1a09fc 1807=item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
748a9306 1808
1809(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
8b1a09fc 1810and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1811name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
748a9306 1812
a0d0e21e 1813=item No Perl script found in input
1814
1815(F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1816with #! and containing the word "perl".
1817
1818=item No setregid available
1819
1820(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1821your system.
1822
1823=item No setreuid available
1824
1825(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1826your system.
1827
1828=item No space allowed after B<-I>
1829
1830(F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1831intervening space.
1832
57079c46 1833=item No such array field
1834
1835(F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1836not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1837array indices for that to work.
1838
f1192cee 1839=item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1840
1841(F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1842does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1843the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1844is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1845
748a9306 1846=item No such pipe open
1847
1848(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1849close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1850an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1851
a0d0e21e 1852=item No such signal: SIG%s
1853
1854(W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1855Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1856
bd3fa61c 1857=item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1858
db7c17d7 1859(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
f675dbe5 1860timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1861to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1862to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1863get local time.
1864
a0d0e21e 1865=item Not a CODE reference
1866
1867(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1868subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1869use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1870See also L<perlref>.
1871
1872=item Not a format reference
1873
1874(F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1875format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1876
1877=item Not a GLOB reference
1878
55497cff 1879(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
a0d0e21e 1880a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1881something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1882what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1883
1884=item Not a HASH reference
1885
1886(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1887found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1888function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1889
1890=item Not a perl script
1891
1892(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1893even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1894mention perl.
1895
1896=item Not a SCALAR reference
1897
1898(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1899found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1900function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1901
1902=item Not a subroutine reference
1903
1904(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1905subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1906use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1907See also L<perlref>.
1908
e7ea3e70 1909=item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
a0d0e21e 1910
1911(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
8b1a09fc 1912doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 1913
1914=item Not an ARRAY reference
1915
1916(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1917found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1918function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1919
1920=item Not enough arguments for %s
1921
1922(F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1923
1924=item Not enough format arguments
1925
1926(W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1927See L<perlform>.
1928
1929=item Null filename used
1930
5f05dabc 1931(F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
a0d0e21e 1932that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1933
55497cff 1934=item Null picture in formline
1935
1936(F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1937specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1938supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1939
a0d0e21e 1940=item NULL OP IN RUN
1941
1942(P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1943
1944=item Null realloc
1945
1946(P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1947
1948=item NULL regexp argument
1949
5f05dabc 1950(P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
a0d0e21e 1951
1952=item NULL regexp parameter
1953
1954(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1955
fc36a67e 1956=item Number too long
1957
1958(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1959about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1960Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1961try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1962
1930e939 1963=item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
a0d0e21e 1964
1930e939 1965(S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
1966is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
a0d0e21e 1967
bbce6d69 1968=item Offset outside string
1969
1970(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
1971pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
1972The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
1973will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
1974
a0d0e21e 1975=item oops: oopsAV
1976
1977(S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1978
1979=item oops: oopsHV
1980
1981(S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1982
56f7f34b 1983=item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
44a8e56a 1984
e7ea3e70 1985(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
1986no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
1987terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
1988operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
1989true. See L<overload>.
44a8e56a 1990
748a9306 1991=item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
1992
1993(S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
1994expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
1995to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
1996For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
1997if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
1998
a0d0e21e 1999=item Out of memory for yacc stack
2000
2001(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2002but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2003
1b979e0a 2004=item Out of memory during request for %s
a0d0e21e 2005
55497cff 2006(X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
54310121 2007remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
eff9c6e2 2008
2009The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2010depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2011However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2012an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
55497cff 2013error is trappable I<once>.
2014
1b979e0a 2015=item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
55497cff 2016
2017(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2018remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2019the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2020a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2021
1b979e0a 2022=item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2023
2024(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2025is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2026instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2027
a0d0e21e 2028=item page overflow
2029
2030(W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2031See L<perlform>.
2032
2033=item panic: ck_grep
2034
2035(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2036
2037=item panic: ck_split
2038
2039(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2040
2041=item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2042
2043(P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2044are in the savestack.
2045
810b8aa5 2046=item panic: del_backref
2047
2048(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2049reference.
2050
a0d0e21e 2051=item panic: die %s
2052
2053(P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2054it wasn't an eval context.
2055
2056=item panic: do_match
2057
2058(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2059
2060=item panic: do_split
2061
2062(P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2063
2064=item panic: do_subst
2065
2066(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2067
2068=item panic: do_trans
2069
2070(P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2071
c635e13b 2072=item panic: frexp
2073
2074(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2075
a0d0e21e 2076=item panic: goto
2077
2078(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2079and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2080
2081=item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2082
2083(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2084
2085=item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2086
2087(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2088
e446cec8 2089=item panic: kid popen errno read
2090
2091(F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2092
a0d0e21e 2093=item panic: last
2094
2095(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2096it wasn't a block context.
2097
2098=item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2099
5f05dabc 2100(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
a0d0e21e 2101
2102=item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2103
2104(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2105invalid enum on the top of it.
2106
2107=item panic: malloc
2108
2109(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2110
810b8aa5 2111=item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2112
2113(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2114references to an object.
2115
a0d0e21e 2116=item panic: mapstart
2117
2118(P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2119
2120=item panic: null array
2121
2122(P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2123
2124=item panic: pad_alloc
2125
2126(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2127and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2128
2129=item panic: pad_free curpad
2130
2131(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2132and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2133
2134=item panic: pad_free po
2135
2136(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2137
2138=item panic: pad_reset curpad
2139
2140(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2141and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2142
2143=item panic: pad_sv po
2144
2145(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2146
2147=item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2148
2149(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2150and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2151
2152=item panic: pad_swipe po
2153
2154(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2155
2156=item panic: pp_iter
2157
2158(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2159
2160=item panic: realloc
2161
2162(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2163
2164=item panic: restartop
2165
2166(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2167didn't supply the destination.
2168
2169=item panic: return
2170
2171(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2172then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2173
2174=item panic: scan_num
2175
2176(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2177
2178=item panic: sv_insert
2179
2180(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2181was string.
2182
2183=item panic: top_env
2184
6224f72b 2185(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
a0d0e21e 2186
2187=item panic: yylex
2188
2189(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2190
7b8d334a 2191=item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
a0d0e21e 2192
2193(W) You said something like
2194
2195 my $foo, $bar = @_;
2196
2197when you meant
2198
2199 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2200
2201Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2202
2203=item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2204
2205(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2206than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2207anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2208
2209=item Permission denied
2210
2211(F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2212
bd3fa61c 2213=item pid %x not a child
748a9306 2214
2215(W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2216isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2217perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2218
a0d0e21e 2219=item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2220
2221(F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2222the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2223
bbce6d69 2224=item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2225
774d564b 2226(W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2227strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2228as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
7b8d334a 2229parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
bbce6d69 2230
774d564b 2231You probably wrote something like this:
2232
54310121 2233 @list = qw(
774d564b 2234 a # a comment
bbce6d69 2235 b # another comment
774d564b 2236 );
bbce6d69 2237
2238when you should have written this:
2239
774d564b 2240 @list = qw(
54310121 2241 a
2242 b
774d564b 2243 );
2244
2245If you really want comments, build your list the
2246old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2247
2248 @list = (
2249 'a', # a comment
2250 'b', # another comment
2251 );
bbce6d69 2252
2253=item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2254
774d564b 2255(W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
68dc0745 2256aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
774d564b 2257delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2258used.)
bbce6d69 2259
54310121 2260You probably wrote something like this:
bbce6d69 2261
774d564b 2262 qw! a, b, c !;
2263
2264which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2265commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
bbce6d69 2266
774d564b 2267 qw! a b c !;
bbce6d69 2268
a0d0e21e 2269=item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2270
2271(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2272Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2273end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2274Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2275
2276=item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2277
2278(S) The old irregular construct
cb1a09d0 2279
a0d0e21e 2280 open FOO || die;
2281
2282is now misinterpreted as
2283
2284 open(FOO || die);
2285
68dc0745 2286because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2287and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2288put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2289instead of "||".
a0d0e21e 2290
2291=item print on closed filehandle %s
2292
2293(W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2294Check your logic flow.
2295
2296=item printf on closed filehandle %s
2297
2298(W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2299Check your logic flow.
2300
2301=item Probable precedence problem on %s
2302
54310121 2303(W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
a0d0e21e 2304which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2305last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2306
2307 open FOO || die;
2308
3fe9a6f1 2309=item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4633a7c4 2310
3fe9a6f1 2311(S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2312or defined with a different function prototype.
4633a7c4 2313
89ea2908 2314=item Range iterator outside integer range
2315
2316(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2317are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2318One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2319increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2320
af8c498a 2321=item Read on closed filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 2322
2323(W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2324Check your logic flow.
2325
2326=item Reallocation too large: %lx
2327
54310121 2328(F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
a0d0e21e 2329
2330=item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2331
2332(F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2333desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2334which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2335
3e0ccd42 2336=item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
a0d0e21e 2337
2338(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2339an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2340
3e0ccd42 2341=item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2342
2343(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2344method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2345
1930e939 2346=item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2347
2348(W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2349an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2350usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2351to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
7b8d334a 2352
2353 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2354 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2355 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2356 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2357
810b8aa5 2358=item Reference is already weak
2359
2360(W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2361Doing so has no effect.
2362
a0d0e21e 2363=item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2364
2365(W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2366reference count of other than 1.
2367
fb73857a 2368=item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2369
2370(F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2371could match an empty string.
2372
a0d0e21e 2373=item regexp memory corruption
2374
2375(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2376expression compiler gave it.
2377
2378=item regexp out of space
2379
2380(P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2381
a0d0e21e 2382=item Reversed %s= operator
2383
2384(W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2385comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2386
2387=item Runaway format
2388
2389(F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2390produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2391199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2392themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2393shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2394
2395=item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2396
a6006777 2397(W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
a0d0e21e 2398an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
8b1a09fc 2399The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2400assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
a0d0e21e 2401like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
5f05dabc 2402subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
a0d0e21e 2403
748a9306 2404On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
5f05dabc 2405element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
748a9306 2406Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2407L<perlref>.
2408
a6006777 2409=item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2410
2411(W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2412a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2413The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2414assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2415like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2416subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2417
2418On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2419element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2420Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2421L<perlref>.
2422
a0d0e21e 2423=item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2424
54310121 2425(F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2426or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
a0d0e21e 2427
2428=item Search pattern not terminated
2429
2430(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2431construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 2432Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2433
96e4d5b1 2434=item %sseek() on unopened file
a0d0e21e 2435
96e4d5b1 2436(W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2437was either never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e 2438
2439=item select not implemented
2440
2441(F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2442
2443=item sem%s not implemented
2444
2445(F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2446
2447=item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2448
2449(S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2450that had previously been marked as free.
2451
2452=item Semicolon seems to be missing
2453
2454(W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2455or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2456
2457=item Send on closed socket
2458
2459(W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2460Check your logic flow.
2461
1b1626e4 2462=item Sequence (? incomplete
7b8d334a 2463
1b1626e4 2464(F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2465See L<perlre>.
2466
a0d0e21e 2467=item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2468
2469(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
5f05dabc 2470parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 2471
2472=item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2473
2474(F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2475but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2476
2477=item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2478
2479(F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2480See L<perlre>.
2481
a5f75d66 2482=item Server error
2483
9607fc9c 2484Also known as "500 Server error".
2485
2486B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2487
2488You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2489CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2490tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2491from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2492server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2493for more information:
2494
be94a901 2495 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2496 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
9607fc9c 2497 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2498 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2499 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
a5f75d66 2500
be94a901 2501You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2502
a0d0e21e 2503=item setegid() not implemented
2504
8b1a09fc 2505(F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2506the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2507think so.
2508
2509=item seteuid() not implemented
2510
8b1a09fc 2511(F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2512the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2513think so.
2514
2515=item setrgid() not implemented
2516
8b1a09fc 2517(F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2518the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2519think so.
2520
2521=item setruid() not implemented
2522
1f8d2005 2523(F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
a0d0e21e 2524the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2525think so.
2526
2527=item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2528
2529(F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2530because the world might have written on it already.
2531
2532=item shm%s not implemented
2533
2534(F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2535
2536=item shutdown() on closed fd
2537
2538(W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2539
f86702cc 2540=item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
a0d0e21e 2541
2542(W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2543put it into the wrong package?
2544
2545=item sort is now a reserved word
2546
2547(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2548But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2549
2550=item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2551
2552(F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
4633a7c4 2553it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
a0d0e21e 2554See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2555
2556=item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2557
2558(F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2559or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2560
2561=item Split loop
2562
2563(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2564more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2565See L<perlfunc/split>.
2566
8b1a09fc 2567=item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
a0d0e21e 2568
2569(W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
54310121 2570on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e 2571
2572=item Statement unlikely to be reached
2573
2574(W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2575This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2576there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2577which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2578by itself.
2579
17feb5d5 2580=item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2581
2582(W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2583makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2584Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2585the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2586repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2587
e7ea3e70 2588=item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2589
2590(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2591Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2592may break this.
2593
a0d0e21e 2594=item Subroutine %s redefined
2595
2596(W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2597
2598 {
0453d815 2599 no warning;
a0d0e21e 2600 eval "sub name { ... }";
2601 }
2602
2603=item Substitution loop
2604
2605(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2606substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
68dc0745 2607input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
5f05dabc 2608L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
a0d0e21e 2609
2610=item Substitution pattern not terminated
2611
2612(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2613construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 2614Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2615
2616=item Substitution replacement not terminated
2617
2618(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2619construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 2620Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2621
2622=item substr outside of string
2623
3e3baf6d 2624(S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2625string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2626length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2627mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2628of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
a0d0e21e 2629
f86702cc 2630=item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
a0d0e21e 2631
2632(F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2633version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2634
85ab1d1d 2635=item switching effective %s is not implemented
2636
2637(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2638real and effective uids or gids.
2639
a0d0e21e 2640=item syntax error
2641
2642(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2643
2644 A keyword is misspelled.
2645 A semicolon is missing.
2646 A comma is missing.
2647 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2648 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2649 A closing quote is missing.
2650
2651Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2652error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2653The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2654it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
5f05dabc 2655before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
a0d0e21e 2656Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2657the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2658C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2659if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2660
cb1a09d0 2661=item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2662
8b1a09fc 2663(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
3a52c276 2664instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
cb1a09d0 2665into Perl yourself.
2666
6087ac44 2667=item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
a0d0e21e 2668
6087ac44 2669(F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2670"shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2671machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2672unconfigured. Consult your system support.
a0d0e21e 2673
2674=item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2675
2676(W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2677Check your logic flow.
2678
fc36a67e 2679=item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2680
2681(F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2682nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2683
8903cb82 2684=item tell() on unopened file
a0d0e21e 2685
8903cb82 2686(W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2687never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e 2688
8b1a09fc 2689=item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
a0d0e21e 2690
2691(W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2692open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2693
2694=item That use of $[ is unsupported
2695
8b1a09fc 2696(F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
5f05dabc 2697a compiler directive. You may say only one of
a0d0e21e 2698
2699 $[ = 0;
2700 $[ = 1;
2701 ...
2702 local $[ = 0;
2703 local $[ = 1;
2704 ...
2705
2706This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2707out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2708
2709=item The %s function is unimplemented
2710
2711The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2712to the probings of Configure.
2713
f86702cc 2714=item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
a0d0e21e 2715
2716(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2717probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
8b1a09fc 2718think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
a0d0e21e 2719will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2720will deny it.
2721
2722=item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2723
2724(F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2725if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2726the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2727
f675dbe5 2728=item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2729
2730=item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2731
2732(W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2733of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2734built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2735rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2736L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2737%ENV which produced the warning.
2738
a0d0e21e 2739=item times not implemented
2740
2741(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2742you're not running on Unix.
2743
2744=item Too few args to syscall
2745
2746(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2747system call to call, silly dilly.
2748
9607fc9c 2749=item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2750
2751(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
8cc95fdb 2752B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2753This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2754script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2755So Perl gives up.
f86702cc 2756
9607fc9c 2757If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2758mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2759by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2760first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
f86702cc 2761
9607fc9c 2762If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2763B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
f86702cc 2764
8cc95fdb 2765=item Too late for "-%s" option
2766
2767(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2768B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2769are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2770
cb1a09d0 2771=item Too many ('s
2772
2773=item Too many )'s
2774
2775(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 2776of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2777Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 2778
a0d0e21e 2779=item Too many args to syscall
2780
5f05dabc 2781(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
a0d0e21e 2782
2783=item Too many arguments for %s
2784
2785(F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2786
2787=item trailing \ in regexp
2788
2789(F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2790it. See L<perlre>.
2791
2c268ad5 2792=item Transliteration pattern not terminated
a0d0e21e 2793
2794(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
fb73857a 2795or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2796C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2797
2c268ad5 2798=item Transliteration replacement not terminated
a0d0e21e 2799
2800(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2801construct.
2802
2803=item truncate not implemented
2804
2805(F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2806Configure knows about.
2807
2808=item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2809
2810(F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
8b1a09fc 2811certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2812%NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
a0d0e21e 2813{EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2814
2815=item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2816
eec2d3df 2817(W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2818literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2819
2820=item umask not implemented
2821
2822(F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2823to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
a0d0e21e 2824
4633a7c4 2825=item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2826
2827(F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2828
a0d0e21e 2829=item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2830
2831(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2832contexts were entered and left.
2833
2834=item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2835
2836(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2837values were temporarily localized.
2838
2839=item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2840
2841(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2842were entered and left.
2843
2844=item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2845
2846(W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2847scalars were allocated and freed.
2848
2849=item Undefined format "%s" called
2850
2851(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2852another package? See L<perlform>.
2853
2854=item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2855
2856(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2857it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2858
2859=item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2860
2861(F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2862has since been undefined.
2863
2864=item Undefined subroutine called
2865
2866(F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2867or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2868
2869=item Undefined subroutine in sort
2870
2871(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2872have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2873
4633a7c4 2874=item Undefined top format "%s" called
2875
2876(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2877another package? See L<perlform>.
2878
20408e3c 2879=item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2880
2881(W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2882This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2883
a0d0e21e 2884=item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2885
2886(F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2887representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2888
2889=item Unknown BYTEORDER
2890
5f05dabc 2891(F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
a0d0e21e 2892
6170680b 2893=item Unknown open() mode '%s'
2894
2895(F) The second argument of 3-arguments open is not one from the list
2896of C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>, C<+L<gt>>,
2897C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|-> of possible open() modes.
2898
f675dbe5 2899=item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2900
2901(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2902iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2903data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2904subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2905
a0d0e21e 2906=item unmatched () in regexp
2907
2908(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2909expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
5f05dabc 2910the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 2911
d98d5fff 2912=item Unmatched right %s bracket
a0d0e21e 2913
d98d5fff 2914(F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
2915opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
2916As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
2917place you were last editing.
a0d0e21e 2918
2919=item unmatched [] in regexp
2920
2921(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2922include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2923See L<perlre>.
2924
2925=item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2926
54310121 2927(W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
a0d0e21e 2928It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2929an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2930
54310121 2931=item Unrecognized character %s
a0d0e21e 2932
54310121 2933(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2934in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2935script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
a0d0e21e 2936
c9f97d15 2937=item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
2938
2939(W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
2940by Perl.
2941
a0d0e21e 2942=item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2943
2944(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2945Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2946
90248788 2947=item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
a0d0e21e 2948
2949(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2950(If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
2951supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
2952
2953=item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
2954
2955(W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
2956failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
54310121 2957because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
a0d0e21e 2958
2959=item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
2960
2961(F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
2962
54310121 2963=item Unsupported function fork
2964
2965(F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
2966
2967Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
2968Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
2969the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
2970
a0d0e21e 2971=item Unsupported function %s
2972
7b8d334a 2973(F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
a0d0e21e 2974At least, Configure doesn't think so.
2975
2976=item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
2977
2978(F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
2979least that's what Configure thought.
2980
8b1a09fc 2981=item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
a0d0e21e 2982
2983(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2984a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
2985finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
2986the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2987
2988=item Use of $# is deprecated
2989
8b1a09fc 2990(D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
a0d0e21e 2991Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
2992
2993=item Use of $* is deprecated
2994
4a6725af 2995(D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
a0d0e21e 2996you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
2997use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
2998action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
2999
748a9306 3000=item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3001
5f05dabc 3002(F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3003only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
748a9306 3004
8b1a09fc 3005=item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
4633a7c4 3006
3007(D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3fe9a6f1 3008wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4633a7c4 3009
a0d0e21e 3010=item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3011
3012(D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3013subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3014a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3015
dc848c6f 3016=item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3017
5cd24f17 3018(D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3019up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3020be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
7b8d334a 3021as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
dc848c6f 3022
3023This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3024only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3025of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3026interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3027use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3028
3029The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3030non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3031depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3032C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3033
fb73857a 3034In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3035should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
7b8d334a 3036C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
fb73857a 3037
85b81015 3038=item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3039
3040(D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3041may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3042the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3043different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3044names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3045e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3046
dc848c6f 3047=item Use of %s is deprecated
3048
3049(D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3050because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3051bad side effects.
3052
a0d0e21e 3053=item Use of uninitialized value
3054
3055(W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3056interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
5311ebfa 3057warning assign a defined value to your variables.
a0d0e21e 3058
8202fd39 3059=item Useless use of "re" pragma
3060
3061(W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3062
a0d0e21e 3063=item Useless use of %s in void context
3064
3065(W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3066with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3067from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3068this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3069your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3070if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3071
3072 $one, $two = 1, 2;
3073
3074when you meant to say
3075
3076 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3077
748a9306 3078Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3079reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3080example, if you say
3081
3082 $array = (1,2);
3083
3084when you should have said
3085
3086 $array = [1,2];
3087
3088The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3089while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3090a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3091throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3092L<perlref> for more on this.
3093
55497cff 3094=item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3095
3096(W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3097valid when C<untie> was called.
3098
68dc0745 3099=item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
a6006777 3100
68dc0745 3101(W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3102or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3103value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3104probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3105expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
a6006777 3106
f675dbe5 3107=item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3108
3109(W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3110element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3111than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3112characters.
3113
9607fc9c 3114=item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4633a7c4 3115
3116(F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3117that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3118something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3119by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3120on the front of your variable.
3121
44a8e56a 3122=item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3123
3124(W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3125subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3126(innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3127the outermost subroutine. For example:
3128
3129 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3130
3131If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3132indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3133as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3134referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3135the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3136*first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3137you want.
3138
3139In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3140subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3141support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3142subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3143
3144=item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3145
3146(W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3147variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3148
3149When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3150the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3151*first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3152call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3153subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3154other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3155
3156Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3157lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3158will I<never> share the given variable.
3159
3160This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3161anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3162reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
54310121 3163they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
44a8e56a 3164variables.
3165
f86702cc 3166=item Variable syntax
cb1a09d0 3167
3168(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3a52c276 3169of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3170Perl yourself.
cb1a09d0 3171
3e6e419a 3172=item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3173
3174(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3175
3176 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3177 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3178 LC_ALL = "En_US",
3179 LANG = (unset)
3180 are supported and installed on your system.
3181 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3182
3183Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3184settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3185This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3186administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3187not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3188is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3189script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3190will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3191fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3192
7e1af8bc 3193=item Warning: something's wrong
5f05dabc 3194
3195(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3196you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3197
f86702cc 3198=item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
a0d0e21e 3199
8b1a09fc 3200(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
5f05dabc 3201close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
a0d0e21e 3202
5f05dabc 3203=item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
a0d0e21e 3204
3205(S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3206binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3207unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3208has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3209
3210 rand + 5;
3211
3212you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3213
3214 rand() + 5;
3215
3216but in actual fact, you got
3217
3218 rand(+5);
3219
5f05dabc 3220So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
a0d0e21e 3221
af8c498a 3222=item Write on closed filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 3223
3224(W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3225Check your logic flow.
3226
3227=item X outside of string
3228
3229(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3230the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3231
3232=item x outside of string
3233
3234(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3235the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3236
3237=item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3238
3239(F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3240
3241=item Xsub called in sort
3242
3243(F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3244
3245=item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3246
3247(F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3248already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3249Use a filename instead.
3250
3251=item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3252
5f05dabc 3253(F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
a0d0e21e 3254sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3255about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3256the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3257
3258=item You need to quote "%s"
3259
3260(W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3261already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3262will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3263probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3264
3265=item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3266
3267(W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3268Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3269See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3270
3271=item \1 better written as $1
3272
3273(W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
5f05dabc 3274of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
a0d0e21e 3275substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3276because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3277if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3278
8b1a09fc 3279=item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
748a9306 3280
3281(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3282found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
8b1a09fc 3283'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
748a9306 3284
8b1a09fc 3285=item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
748a9306 3286
3287(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3288thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3289command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3290from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3291streams, such as
3292
3293 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3294 while (<STDIN>) {
3295 print;
3296 print OUT;
3297 }
3298 close OUT;
3299
774d564b 3300=item Got an error from DosAllocMem
33c8a3fe 3301
774d564b 3302(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3303version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
33c8a3fe 3304
3305=item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3306
dc848c6f 3307(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
33c8a3fe 3308
3309 prefix1;prefix2
3310
3311or
3312
3313 prefix1 prefix2
3314
dc848c6f 3315with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3316of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3317may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3318"PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
33c8a3fe 3319
3320=item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3321
54310121 3322(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
dc848c6f 3323C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
33c8a3fe 3324
3325=item Process terminated by SIG%s
3326
3327(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
dc848c6f 3328applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3329port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3330L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3331in F<README.os2>.
33c8a3fe 3332
a0d0e21e 3333=back
3334