1 //depot/perl/pod/perldiag.pod#272 - edit change 14824 (text)
4 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
8 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
11 (W) A warning (optional).
12 (D) A deprecation (optional).
13 (S) A severe warning (default).
14 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
15 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
16 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
17 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
19 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
20 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
22 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
23 category is included with the classification letter in the description
26 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
27 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
28 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
29 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
31 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
32 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
34 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
35 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
36 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
39 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
40 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
41 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
42 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
43 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
48 =item accept() on closed socket %s
50 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
51 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
54 =item Allocation too large: %lx
56 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
58 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
60 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
63 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
65 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
66 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
67 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
68 subroutine is not imported.
70 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
71 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
72 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
73 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
75 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
76 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
77 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
80 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
82 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
83 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
84 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
85 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
87 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
89 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
90 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
91 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
93 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
95 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
96 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
97 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
99 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
101 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
102 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
103 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
104 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
105 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
107 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
114 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
116 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
117 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
118 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
119 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
120 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
121 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
124 =item Args must match #! line
126 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
127 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
128 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
129 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
131 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
133 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
135 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
137 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
142 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
144 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
150 or a hash or array slice, such as:
152 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
153 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
155 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
157 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
158 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
161 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
163 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
164 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
165 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
167 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
169 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
170 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
172 =item assertion botched: %s
174 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
176 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
178 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
180 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
182 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
183 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
184 know which context to supply to the right side.
186 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a fixed hash
188 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
189 the current set of allowed keys of a fixed hash.
191 =item Attempt to clear a fixed hash
193 (F) It is currently not allowed to clear a fixed hash, even if the
194 new hash would contain the same keys as before. This may change in
197 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a fixed hash
199 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
200 declared readonly from a fixed hash.
202 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a fixed hash
204 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a fixed hash a key which
205 is not in its key set.
207 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
209 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
210 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
211 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
217 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
219 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
220 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
223 bless $self, "$proto";
225 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
227 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
228 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
229 outside any of those arenas.
231 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
233 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
234 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
235 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
236 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
238 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
240 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
241 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
242 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
243 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
246 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
248 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
250 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
252 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
253 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
254 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
255 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
256 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
257 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
260 =item Attempt to join self
262 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
263 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
264 to move the join() to some other thread.
266 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
268 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
269 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
270 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
271 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
272 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
275 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
277 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
278 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
279 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
281 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
283 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
284 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
285 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
286 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
288 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
290 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
291 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
292 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
294 =item Bad filehandle: %s
296 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
297 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
298 open(), or did it in another package.
300 =item Bad free() ignored
302 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
303 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
304 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
306 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
307 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
308 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
312 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
314 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
316 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
317 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
320 =item Badly placed ()'s
322 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
323 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
326 =item Bad name after %s::
328 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
329 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
338 $sym = "mypack::$var";
340 =item Bad realloc() ignored
342 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
343 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
344 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
346 =item Bad symbol for array
348 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
349 wasn't a symbol table entry.
351 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
353 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
354 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
356 =item Bad symbol for hash
358 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
359 wasn't a symbol table entry.
361 =item Bareword found in conditional
363 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
364 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
365 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
369 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
372 use constant TYPO => 1;
373 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
375 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
377 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
379 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
380 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
381 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
383 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
385 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
386 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
387 you need to predeclare a package?
389 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
391 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
392 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
395 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
397 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
398 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
399 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
400 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
401 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
403 =item \1 better written as $1
405 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
406 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
407 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
408 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
409 there are more than 9 backreferences.
411 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
413 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
414 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
415 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
417 =item bind() on closed socket %s
419 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
420 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
422 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
424 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
425 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
427 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
429 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
431 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
433 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
436 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
438 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
439 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
441 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
443 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
444 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
445 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
447 =item Callback called exit
449 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
450 exited by calling exit.
452 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
454 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
455 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
456 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
457 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
458 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
459 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
460 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
461 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
463 =item / cannot take a count
465 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
466 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
469 =item Can't bless non-reference value
471 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
472 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
474 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
476 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
477 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
478 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
480 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
482 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
483 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
484 like this will reproduce the error:
487 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
488 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
490 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
492 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
493 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
494 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
495 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
497 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
499 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
500 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
501 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
502 Something like this will reproduce the error:
505 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
506 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
508 =item Can't chdir to %s
510 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
511 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
513 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
515 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
518 =item Can't coerce array into hash
520 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
521 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
522 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
524 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
526 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
527 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
537 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
539 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
541 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
542 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
544 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
546 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
547 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
549 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
551 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
552 quotas or other plumbing problems.
554 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
556 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
557 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
558 extended for other types of variables in future.
560 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
562 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
563 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
565 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
567 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
568 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
570 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
572 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
575 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
577 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
578 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
579 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
581 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
583 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
584 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
585 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
587 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
589 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
590 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
591 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
593 =item Can't do setegid!
595 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
598 =item Can't do seteuid!
600 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
602 =item Can't do setuid
604 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
605 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
606 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
607 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
608 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
609 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
611 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
613 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
614 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
616 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
618 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
619 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
622 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
624 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
625 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
626 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
627 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
628 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
629 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
634 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
635 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
636 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
638 =item Can't execute %s
640 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
641 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
643 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
645 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
646 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
648 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
650 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
651 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
652 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
653 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
655 =item Can't find label %s
657 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
658 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
660 =item Can't find %s on PATH
662 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
665 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
667 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
668 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
669 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
671 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
673 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
674 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
675 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
677 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
679 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
680 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
681 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
683 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
685 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property for
686 example \p{Lu} is all uppercase letters. if you did mean to use a
687 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
688 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
689 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
694 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
697 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
699 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
700 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
701 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
702 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
703 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
704 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
705 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
706 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
707 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
708 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
709 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
710 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
711 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
712 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
713 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
715 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
717 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
718 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
720 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
722 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
723 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
725 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
727 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
728 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
730 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
732 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
733 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
734 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
735 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
737 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
739 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
740 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
741 probably don't want to.)
743 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
745 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
746 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
747 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
748 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
750 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
752 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
753 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
754 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
755 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
756 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
757 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
759 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
761 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
762 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
763 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
764 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
765 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
766 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
769 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
771 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
772 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
773 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
776 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
778 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
779 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
780 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
781 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
783 =item Can't localize through a reference
785 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
786 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
787 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
788 that $ref will still be a reference.
790 =item Can't locate %s
792 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
793 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
794 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
795 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
796 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
797 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
798 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
800 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
802 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
803 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
804 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
805 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
807 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
809 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
810 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
811 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
813 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
815 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
816 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
817 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
819 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
821 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
822 doesn't seem to exist.
824 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
826 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
829 =item Can't modify %s in %s
831 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
832 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
834 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
836 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
839 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
841 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
842 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
844 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
846 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
849 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
851 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
852 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
853 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
854 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
855 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
856 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
858 =item Can't open %s: %s
860 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
861 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
862 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
863 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
866 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
868 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
869 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
870 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
871 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
873 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
875 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
876 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
877 the command line for writing.
879 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
881 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
882 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
883 command line for reading.
885 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
887 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
888 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
889 the command line for writing.
891 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
893 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
894 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
897 =item Can't open perl script%s: %s
899 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
901 =item Can't read CRTL environ
903 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
904 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
905 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
906 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
909 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
911 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
912 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
913 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
914 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
916 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
918 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
919 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
920 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
921 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
922 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
923 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
925 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
927 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
928 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
929 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
931 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
933 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
934 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
936 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
938 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
939 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
941 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
943 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
944 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
945 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
947 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
949 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
952 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
954 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
955 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
958 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
960 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
961 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
962 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
963 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
966 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
968 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
969 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
971 =item Can't stat script "%s"
973 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
974 open already. Bizarre.
976 =item Can't swap uid and euid
978 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
981 =item Can't take log of %g
983 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
984 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
985 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
988 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
990 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
991 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
992 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
994 =item Can't undef active subroutine
996 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
997 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
998 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1002 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1003 as the main Perl stack.
1005 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1007 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1008 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1009 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1010 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1012 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1014 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1015 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1018 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1020 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1021 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1023 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1025 (P) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1026 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1027 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1029 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1031 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1032 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1034 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1036 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1037 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1038 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1040 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1042 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1045 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1047 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1048 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1049 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1050 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1053 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1055 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1056 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1057 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1058 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1061 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1063 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1064 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1065 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1067 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1069 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1070 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1072 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1074 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1075 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1076 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1078 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1080 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1081 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1082 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1083 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1084 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1087 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1089 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1090 references can be weakened.
1092 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1094 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1095 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1096 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1098 =item Character in "C" format wrapped
1104 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1105 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1106 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1110 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1113 =item Character in "c" format wrapped
1119 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1120 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1121 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1123 pack("c", $x & 255);
1125 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1128 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1130 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1132 =item %s: Command not found
1134 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1135 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1137 =item Compilation failed in require
1139 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1140 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1141 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1143 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1145 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1146 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1147 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1148 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1149 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1150 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1151 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1152 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1153 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1155 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1157 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1158 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1159 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1161 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1163 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1164 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1165 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1166 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1169 =item Constant is not %s reference
1171 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1172 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1173 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1174 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1175 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1177 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1179 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1180 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1181 commentary and workarounds.
1183 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1185 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1186 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1189 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1191 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1192 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1194 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1196 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1198 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1200 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1201 expression compiler gave it.
1203 =item corrupted regexp program
1205 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1208 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1210 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1212 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1214 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1215 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1216 redirected it with select().)
1218 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1220 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1221 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1223 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1225 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1226 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1227 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1228 which case it indicates something else.
1230 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1232 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1233 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1234 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1236 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1238 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1239 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1240 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1242 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1244 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1245 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1247 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1249 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1250 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1251 that triggers this error.
1253 =item Did not produce a valid header
1257 =item %s did not return a true value
1259 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1260 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1261 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1262 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1264 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1266 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1269 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1271 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1272 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1275 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1277 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1278 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1283 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1284 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1286 =item Document contains no data
1290 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1292 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1293 define a C<$VERSION.>
1295 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1297 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1299 =item do_study: out of memory
1301 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1303 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1305 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1306 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1307 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1308 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1309 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1310 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1311 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1312 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1314 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1316 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1317 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1319 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1321 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1324 =item elseif should be elsif
1326 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1327 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1328 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1329 unlikely to be what you want.
1333 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1334 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1335 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1337 =item entering effective %s failed
1339 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1340 effective uids or gids failed.
1342 =item Error converting file specification %s
1344 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1345 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1346 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1347 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1348 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1350 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1352 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1353 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1354 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1356 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1358 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1359 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1360 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1361 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1362 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1363 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1365 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1367 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1368 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1369 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1371 =item Excessively long <> operator
1373 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1374 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1375 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1376 variable and glob that.
1378 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1380 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1382 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1384 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1386 =item Exiting eval via %s
1388 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1389 goto, or a loop control statement.
1391 =item Exiting format via %s
1393 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1394 goto, or a loop control statement.
1396 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1398 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1399 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1400 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1402 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1404 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1405 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1407 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1409 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1410 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1412 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1414 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1415 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1416 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1417 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1419 =item %s: Expression syntax
1421 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1422 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1424 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1426 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1427 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1428 routines has been prematurely ended.
1430 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1432 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1433 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1434 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1435 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1436 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1438 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1440 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1441 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1442 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1443 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1445 =item fcntl is not implemented
1447 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1448 PDP-11 or something?
1450 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1452 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1453 to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1454 or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1455 the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1457 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1459 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1460 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1461 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1462 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1464 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1466 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1467 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1468 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1471 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1473 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1474 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1475 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1478 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1480 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1481 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1482 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1485 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex;
1487 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1489 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
1490 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
1491 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1493 =item Format not terminated
1495 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1496 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1498 =item Format %s redefined
1500 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1503 no warnings 'redefine';
1504 eval "format NAME =...";
1507 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1517 (or something like that).
1519 =item %s found where operator expected
1521 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1522 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1523 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1524 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1526 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1528 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1530 =item gethostent not implemented
1532 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1533 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1536 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1538 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1539 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1541 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1543 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1544 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1546 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1548 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1549 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1550 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1552 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1554 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1555 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1556 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1559 =item glob failed (%s)
1561 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1562 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1563 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1564 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1565 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1566 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1567 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1568 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1569 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1570 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1571 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1573 =item Glob not terminated
1575 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1576 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1577 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1578 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1580 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1582 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1583 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1585 =item goto must have label
1587 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1588 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1590 =item %s-group starts with a count
1592 (F) In pack/unpack a ()-group started with a count. A count is
1593 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1595 =item %s had compilation errors
1597 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1599 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1601 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1602 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1603 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1605 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1607 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1608 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1610 =item %s has too many errors
1612 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1613 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1615 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1617 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1618 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1619 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1621 =item Identifier too long
1623 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1624 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1625 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1626 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1628 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1630 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1632 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1634 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1635 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1638 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1640 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1641 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1642 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1643 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1644 to your Perl administrator.
1646 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1648 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1649 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1651 =item Illegal division by zero
1653 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1654 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1657 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1659 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1660 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1661 number stopped before the illegal character.
1663 =item Illegal modulus zero
1665 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1666 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1668 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1670 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1671 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1673 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1675 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1677 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1679 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1680 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1682 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1684 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1685 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1687 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1689 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1690 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1691 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1693 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1695 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1696 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1697 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1700 =item (in cleanup) %s
1702 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1703 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1704 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1705 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1706 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1708 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1709 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1711 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1713 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1714 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1715 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1717 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1719 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1720 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1721 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1722 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1723 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1724 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1725 L<perlsec> for more information.
1727 =item Insecure directory in %s
1729 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1730 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1731 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1733 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1735 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1736 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1737 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1738 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1739 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1741 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1743 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1744 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1745 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1746 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1747 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1748 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1749 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1750 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1753 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1755 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1756 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1759 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1761 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1762 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1763 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1764 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1765 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1766 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1768 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1770 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1771 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1774 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1776 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1777 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1778 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1779 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1781 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1783 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1784 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1786 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1788 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1789 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1791 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1793 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1794 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1796 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1798 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1799 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1800 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1801 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1802 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1804 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator
1806 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1807 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1809 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1811 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1812 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1813 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1816 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1818 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1819 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1822 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1824 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1826 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1829 =item ioctl is not implemented
1831 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1832 strange for a machine that supports C.
1834 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1836 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1837 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1839 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1841 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1842 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1844 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1846 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1847 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1850 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1852 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1855 =item junk on end of regexp
1857 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1859 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1861 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1862 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1865 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1867 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1868 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1871 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1873 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1874 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1877 =item leaving effective %s failed
1879 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1880 effective uids or gids failed.
1882 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1884 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1885 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1888 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1890 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1891 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1892 instead on the filehandle.)
1894 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1896 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1897 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1898 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1900 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex;
1902 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1904 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1905 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1906 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1908 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1910 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1917 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1918 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1919 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1920 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
1922 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
1924 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
1925 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
1926 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
1927 when the function is called.
1929 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
1931 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
1933 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
1934 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
1935 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
1937 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
1939 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
1940 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
1942 =item %s matches null string many times in regex;
1944 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1946 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1947 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
1948 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1951 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
1953 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
1954 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
1957 =item % may only be used in unpack
1959 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1960 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1961 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1963 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1965 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1966 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1968 =item Method %s not permitted
1972 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1974 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1975 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1976 ended earlier on the current line.
1978 =item Misplaced _ in number
1980 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
1981 separate two digits.
1983 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1985 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1986 double-quotish context.
1988 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1990 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1991 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1993 =item Missing command in piped open
1995 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
1996 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
1999 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2001 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2002 they have a name with which they can be found.
2004 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2006 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2007 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2008 can vary from one line to the next.
2010 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2012 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2013 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2015 =item Missing right brace on %s
2017 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2019 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2021 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2022 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2025 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2027 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2028 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2029 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2031 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2033 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2034 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2035 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2037 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2040 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2042 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2043 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2046 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2047 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2050 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2052 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2053 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2056 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2058 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2059 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2061 =item Module name must be constant
2063 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2065 =item Module name required with -%c option
2067 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2068 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2069 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2071 =item More than one argument to open
2073 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2074 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2075 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2076 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2078 =item msg%s not implemented
2080 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2082 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2084 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2085 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2087 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
2089 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2090 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2091 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2093 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
2095 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
2096 must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
2097 of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2099 =item / must follow a numeric type
2101 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
2102 follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2104 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2106 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2109 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2111 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2112 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2113 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2115 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2117 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2118 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2119 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2120 provided for this purpose.
2122 =item Negative length
2124 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2125 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2127 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2129 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2130 greater than or equal to zero.
2132 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2134 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2135 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2136 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2138 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2139 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2141 =item %s never introduced
2143 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2144 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2146 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2148 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2149 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2150 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2151 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2153 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2155 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2157 =item No comma allowed after %s
2159 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2160 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2161 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2163 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2164 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2165 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2166 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2167 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2168 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2169 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2170 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2171 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2172 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2173 this error was triggered?
2175 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2177 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2178 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2179 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2181 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2183 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2184 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2185 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2186 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2187 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2189 =item No dbm on this machine
2191 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2192 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2194 =item No DBsub routine
2196 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2197 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2198 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2199 ordinary subroutine call.
2201 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2203 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2204 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2205 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2207 =item No input file after < on command line
2209 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2210 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2211 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2215 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2216 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2218 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2220 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2221 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2223 =item No output file after > on command line
2225 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2226 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2227 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2229 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2231 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2232 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2233 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2235 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2237 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2238 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2239 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2241 =item No Perl script found in input
2243 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2244 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2246 =item No setregid available
2248 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2251 =item No setreuid available
2253 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2256 =item No space allowed after -%c
2258 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2259 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2261 =item No %s specified for -%c
2263 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2264 you haven't specified one.
2266 =item No such class %s
2268 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2269 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2271 =item No such pipe open
2273 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2274 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2275 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2277 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2279 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2280 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2281 array indices for that to work.
2283 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2285 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2286 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2287 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2288 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2290 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2292 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2293 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2294 names on your system.
2296 =item Not a CODE reference
2298 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2299 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2300 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2303 =item Not a format reference
2305 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2306 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2308 =item Not a GLOB reference
2310 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2311 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2312 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2313 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2315 =item Not a HASH reference
2317 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2318 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2319 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2321 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2323 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2324 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2325 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2327 =item Not a perl script
2329 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2330 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2333 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2335 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2336 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2337 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2339 =item Not a subroutine reference
2341 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2342 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2343 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2346 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2348 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2349 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2351 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2353 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2355 =item Not enough format arguments
2357 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2358 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2362 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2363 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2366 =item %s not allowed in length fields
2368 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
2369 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes. Redesign
2372 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2374 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2375 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2376 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2377 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2378 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2380 =item Null filename used
2382 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2383 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2385 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2387 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2390 =item Null picture in formline
2392 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2393 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2394 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2398 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2400 =item NULL regexp argument
2402 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2404 =item NULL regexp parameter
2406 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2408 =item Number too long
2410 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2411 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2412 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2413 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2416 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2418 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2419 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2422 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2424 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2425 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2426 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2428 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2430 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2432 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2433 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2435 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2437 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2438 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2440 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2442 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2443 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2445 =item Offset outside string
2447 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2448 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2449 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2450 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2452 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2454 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2455 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2457 =item %s() on unopened %s
2459 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2460 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2461 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2465 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2469 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2471 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2473 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2474 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2475 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2476 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2478 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2480 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2481 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2482 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2483 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2486 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2488 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2489 in the current lexical scope.
2491 =item Out of memory!
2493 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2494 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2495 no option but to exit immediately.
2497 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2499 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2500 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2501 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2502 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2504 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2506 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2507 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2510 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2511 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2512 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2513 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2514 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2515 where the failed request happened.
2517 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2519 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2520 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2521 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2523 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2525 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2526 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2529 =item @ outside of string
2531 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2532 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2534 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2536 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2537 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2538 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2539 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2543 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2544 page. See L<perlform>.
2548 (P) An internal error.
2550 =item panic: ck_grep
2552 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2554 =item panic: ck_split
2556 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2558 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2560 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2561 there are in the savestack.
2563 =item panic: del_backref
2565 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2570 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2571 it wasn't an eval context.
2573 =item panic: pp_match%s
2575 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2578 =item panic: do_subst
2580 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2583 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2585 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2590 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2594 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2595 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2597 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2599 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2601 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2603 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2605 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2607 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2611 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2612 it wasn't a block context.
2614 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2616 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2619 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2621 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2622 invalid enum on the top of it.
2624 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2626 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2627 references to an object.
2631 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2633 =item panic: mapstart
2635 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2637 =item panic: null array
2639 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2641 =item panic: pad_alloc
2643 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2644 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2646 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2648 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2649 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2651 =item panic: pad_free po
2653 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2655 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2657 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2658 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2660 =item panic: pad_sv po
2662 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2664 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2666 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2667 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2669 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2671 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2673 =item panic: pp_iter
2675 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2677 =item panic: pp_split
2679 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2681 =item panic: realloc
2683 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2685 =item panic: restartop
2687 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2688 didn't supply the destination.
2692 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2693 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2695 =item panic: scan_num
2697 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2699 =item panic: sv_insert
2701 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2704 =item panic: top_env
2706 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2710 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2712 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2714 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2715 to even) byte length.
2717 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2719 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2725 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2727 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2729 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2731 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2732 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2733 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2735 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2737 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2738 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2740 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2742 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2744 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2745 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2748 are supported and installed on your system.
2749 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2751 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2752 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2753 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2754 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2755 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2756 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2757 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2758 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2759 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2760 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2762 =item perlio: argument list not closed for layer "%s"
2764 (S) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you forgot
2765 the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
2766 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
2767 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
2768 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
2769 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2771 =item perlio: invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2773 (S) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2774 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2775 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2776 list was terminated too soon.
2778 =item perlio: unknown layer "%s"
2780 (S) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
2781 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
2782 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
2783 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
2784 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
2785 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2787 =item Permission denied
2789 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2791 =item pid %x not a child
2793 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2794 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2795 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2797 =item P must have an explicit size
2799 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2801 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex;
2803 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2805 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2806 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2807 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2808 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2809 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2810 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2812 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2814 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2816 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2817 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2818 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2819 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2820 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2821 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2823 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2825 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2827 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2828 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2829 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2830 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2831 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2832 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2834 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex;
2836 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2838 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2839 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2840 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2841 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2842 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2844 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2846 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2847 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2849 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2851 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2852 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2853 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2854 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2856 You probably wrote something like this:
2863 when you should have written this:
2870 If you really want comments, build your list the
2871 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2875 'b', # another comment
2878 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2880 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2881 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2882 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2885 You probably wrote something like this:
2889 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2890 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2894 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2896 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2897 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2898 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2899 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2901 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
2903 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
2904 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
2905 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
2906 to the array you apparently lost track of.
2908 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2910 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2911 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2913 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2915 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
2919 use attrs qw(locked);
2922 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2928 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2929 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2931 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2933 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2937 is now misinterpreted as
2941 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2942 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2943 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2946 =item Premature end of script headers
2950 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2952 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
2953 before now. Check your control flow.
2955 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2957 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
2958 before now. Check your control flow.
2960 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2962 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2963 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2964 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2965 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2968 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2970 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2971 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
2973 =item Prototype not terminated
2975 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
2978 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex;
2980 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2982 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
2983 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
2984 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2986 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression;
2988 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2990 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2991 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
2992 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
2993 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
2994 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2996 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2999 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3001 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3002 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3003 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3004 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3006 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3008 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3009 before now. Check your control flow.
3011 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3013 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3015 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3017 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3020 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3022 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3023 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3024 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3026 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3028 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3029 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3031 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3033 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3034 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3037 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3039 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3040 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3041 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3042 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3044 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3045 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3046 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3047 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3049 =item Reference is already weak
3051 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3052 Doing so has no effect.
3054 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3056 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3057 a reference count of other than 1.
3059 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex;
3061 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3063 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3064 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3065 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3066 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3068 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3071 =item regexp memory corruption
3073 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3074 expression compiler gave it.
3076 =item Regexp out of space
3078 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3081 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
3083 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3084 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3086 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
3088 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3089 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3091 =item Reversed %s= operator
3093 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3094 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3096 =item Runaway format
3098 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3099 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3100 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3101 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3102 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3104 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3106 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3107 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3108 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3109 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3110 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3111 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3112 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3114 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3115 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3116 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3119 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3121 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3122 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3123 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3124 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3125 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3126 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3127 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3129 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3130 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3131 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3134 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3136 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3137 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3138 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3139 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3141 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3143 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3144 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3146 =item Search pattern not terminated
3148 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3149 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3150 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3152 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3154 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3155 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3157 =item select not implemented
3159 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3161 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3163 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3164 the current implementation.
3166 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3168 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3169 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3171 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3173 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3174 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3176 =item sem%s not implemented
3178 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3180 =item send() on closed socket %s
3182 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3183 before now. Check your control flow.
3185 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3187 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3188 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3191 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex;
3193 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3195 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3196 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3197 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3200 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex;
3202 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3204 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3205 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3206 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3208 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex;
3210 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3212 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3213 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3214 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3216 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex;
3218 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3220 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3221 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3222 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3225 =item 500 Server error
3231 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3232 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3233 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3234 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3235 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3236 produce a valid header".
3238 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3240 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3241 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3242 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3243 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3244 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3245 Please see the following for more information:
3247 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3248 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3249 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3251 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3253 =item setegid() not implemented
3255 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3256 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3259 =item seteuid() not implemented
3261 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3262 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3265 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3267 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3268 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3271 =item setrgid() not implemented
3273 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3274 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3277 =item setruid() not implemented
3279 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3280 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3283 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3285 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3286 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3287 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3289 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3291 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3292 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3294 =item shm%s not implemented
3296 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3298 =item <> should be quotes
3300 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3303 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3305 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3306 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3307 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3308 probably not what you had in mind.
3310 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3312 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3315 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3317 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3318 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3320 =item sort is now a reserved word
3322 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3323 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3325 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3327 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3328 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3329 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3331 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3333 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3334 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3336 =item splice() offset past end of array
3338 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3339 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3340 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3341 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3346 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3347 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3348 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3350 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3352 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3353 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3354 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3355 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3358 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3360 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3361 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3363 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3365 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3366 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3367 C<can> may break this.
3369 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3371 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3374 no warnings 'redefine';
3375 eval "sub name { ... }";
3378 =item Substitution loop
3380 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3381 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3382 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3383 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3385 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3387 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3388 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3389 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3391 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3393 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3394 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3395 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3397 =item substr outside of string
3399 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3400 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3401 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3402 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3403 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3405 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3407 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3408 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3410 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex;
3412 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3414 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3415 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3416 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3417 clustering parentheses:
3419 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3421 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3422 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3424 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex;
3426 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3428 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3429 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3430 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3432 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3434 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3435 and effective uids or gids.
3439 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3441 A keyword is misspelled.
3442 A semicolon is missing.
3444 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3445 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3446 A closing quote is missing.
3448 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3449 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3450 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3451 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3452 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3453 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3454 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3455 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3456 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3459 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3461 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3462 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3465 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3467 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3468 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3469 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3473 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3475 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3477 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3478 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3479 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3480 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3482 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3484 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3485 before now. Check your control flow.
3487 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3489 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3490 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3492 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3494 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3495 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3497 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3499 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3500 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3509 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3510 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3512 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3514 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3515 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3516 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3517 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3520 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3522 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3523 to the probings of Configure.
3525 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3527 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3528 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3529 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3532 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3534 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3536 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3537 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3538 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3539 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3540 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3541 target of the change to
3542 %ENV which produced the warning.
3544 =item times not implemented
3546 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3547 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3549 =item Too few args to syscall
3551 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3552 system call to call, silly dilly.
3554 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3556 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3557 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3558 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3559 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3562 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3563 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3564 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3565 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3567 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3568 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3570 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3572 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3573 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3574 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3576 =item Too late to run %s block
3578 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3579 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3580 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3581 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3584 =item Too many args to syscall
3586 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3588 =item Too many arguments for %s
3590 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3596 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3597 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3599 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3601 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3602 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3604 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3606 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3607 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3608 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3610 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3612 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3615 =item truncate not implemented
3617 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3618 Configure knows about.
3620 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3622 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3623 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3624 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3625 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3627 =item umask not implemented
3629 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3630 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3632 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3634 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3636 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3638 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3639 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3641 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3643 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3644 many values were temporarily localized.
3646 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3648 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3649 many blocks were entered and left.
3651 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3653 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3654 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3656 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3658 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3659 another package? See L<perlform>.
3661 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3663 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3664 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3666 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3668 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3669 since been undefined.
3671 =item Undefined subroutine called
3673 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3674 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3676 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3678 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3679 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3681 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3683 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3684 another package? See L<perlform>.
3686 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3688 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3689 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3692 =item %s: Undefined variable
3694 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3695 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3697 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3699 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3700 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3702 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3704 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3705 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3706 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3708 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3710 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3713 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3715 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3717 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex;
3719 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3721 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3722 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3723 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3724 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3725 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3728 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3729 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3731 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3733 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3734 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3735 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3737 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3739 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3740 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3741 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3742 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3744 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3746 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
3747 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
3749 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
3750 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
3753 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3755 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3756 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3757 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3758 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3760 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3762 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3763 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3764 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3765 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3767 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3769 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3770 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3771 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3772 you were last editing.
3774 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3776 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3777 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3778 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3781 =item Unrecognized character %s
3783 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3784 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3785 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3787 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3789 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3790 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3791 understood literally.
3793 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex;
3795 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3797 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3798 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3799 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
3800 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3801 escape was discovered.
3803 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3805 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3808 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3810 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3811 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3814 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3816 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3817 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3818 bad switch on your behalf.)
3820 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3822 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3823 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3824 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3826 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3828 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3830 =item Unsupported function %s
3832 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3833 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3835 =item Unsupported function fork
3837 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3839 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3840 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3841 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3843 =item Unsupported script encoding
3845 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
3846 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
3848 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3850 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3851 least that's what Configure thought.
3853 =item Unterminated attribute list
3855 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3856 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3857 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3858 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
3860 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3862 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3863 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3864 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3865 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3867 =item Unterminated compressed integer
3869 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3870 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3871 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3873 =item Unterminated <> operator
3875 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3876 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3877 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3878 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3880 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3882 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3883 still valid when C<untie> was called.
3885 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex;
3887 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3889 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
3890 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
3892 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
3896 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
3898 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3899 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3901 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex;
3903 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3905 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
3906 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
3908 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
3912 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
3914 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3915 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3917 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3919 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3920 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3921 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3922 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3923 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3924 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3929 when you meant to say
3931 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3933 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3934 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3939 when you should have said
3943 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3944 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3945 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3946 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3947 L<perlref> for more on this.
3949 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
3950 since they are often used in statements like
3952 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
3954 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
3957 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3959 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3961 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
3963 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
3967 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
3969 =item Useless use of %s with no values
3971 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
3972 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
3973 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
3974 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
3975 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
3976 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
3978 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3980 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3981 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3983 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3985 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3986 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3988 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
3990 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
3991 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
3993 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
3995 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
3996 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
3997 used. (This may change in the future.)
3999 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4001 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4002 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4003 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4005 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4007 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4008 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4010 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4012 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4013 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4014 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4017 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4018 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4020 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4022 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4023 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4024 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4026 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4028 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4029 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4030 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4031 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4034 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4035 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4036 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4037 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4040 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4041 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4042 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4043 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4046 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4047 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4048 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4050 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4052 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4053 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4054 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4056 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4058 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4059 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4060 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4063 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4065 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4066 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4068 =item Use of $* is deprecated
4070 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
4071 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
4072 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
4073 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
4075 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4077 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4078 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4079 old way has bad side effects.
4081 =item Use of $# is deprecated
4083 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
4084 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4086 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4088 (W) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4089 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4090 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4092 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4093 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4094 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4095 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4097 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4099 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4100 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4101 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4102 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4103 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4104 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4106 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4108 (W taint) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4109 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4110 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4111 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4113 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4115 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4116 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4117 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4119 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4120 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4121 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4122 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4123 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4124 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4127 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4129 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4130 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4131 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4132 be removed in a future version.
4134 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4136 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4137 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4138 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4139 removed in a future version.
4141 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4143 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4144 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4145 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4146 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4147 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4148 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4149 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4151 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4153 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4154 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4155 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4156 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4157 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4158 C<defined> operator.
4160 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4162 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4163 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4164 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4167 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4169 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4170 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4171 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4172 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4173 front of your variable.
4175 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4177 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4178 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4179 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4180 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4181 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4183 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
4185 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
4186 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
4187 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
4188 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
4190 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
4192 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
4193 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
4194 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
4195 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
4196 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
4197 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
4199 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
4200 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
4201 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
4202 between interferes with this feature.
4204 =item Variable syntax
4206 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4207 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4210 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4212 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4213 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
4215 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
4216 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4217 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4218 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4219 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4220 variable will no longer be shared.
4222 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
4223 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
4224 will I<never> share the given variable.
4226 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4227 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4228 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
4229 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4231 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex;
4233 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4235 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4236 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4237 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4239 =item Version number must be a constant number
4241 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4242 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4245 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4247 (W) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4248 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4249 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4250 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4251 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4252 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4255 =item Warning: something's wrong
4257 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4258 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4260 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4262 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4263 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4266 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4268 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4269 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4270 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4271 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4275 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4279 but in actual fact, you got
4283 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4285 =item Wide character in %s
4287 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4288 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print) but can be
4289 turned off by C<no warnings 'utf8';>. You are supposed to explicitly
4290 mark the filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4292 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4294 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4295 before now. Check your control flow.
4297 =item X outside of string
4299 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
4300 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4302 =item x outside of string
4304 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4305 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4307 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4309 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4312 =item Xsub called in sort
4314 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4317 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4319 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4320 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4321 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4324 =item You need to quote "%s"
4326 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4327 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4328 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4329 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4330 what you want, put an & in front.)