3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
22 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
23 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
24 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
27 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
28 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
29 Since the messages are listed in alphabetical order, the symbols
30 C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
34 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
36 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that
39 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
41 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
42 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
43 if you want to localize a package variable.
45 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
47 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
48 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
49 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
50 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
53 =item "no" not allowed in expression
55 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
56 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
58 =item "use" not allowed in expression
60 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
61 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
63 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
65 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
68 =item # cannot take a count
70 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
71 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
74 =item # must be followed by a, A or Z
76 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
77 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
78 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
81 =item # must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
83 (F) You had an pack template indicating a counted-length string,
84 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
87 =item # must follow a numeric type
89 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
90 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
93 =item % may only be used in unpack
95 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
96 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
97 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
99 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
101 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
102 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
104 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
106 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
107 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
109 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
111 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
112 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
113 C<'>-delimited regular expression.
115 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
117 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
118 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
119 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
121 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
123 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
124 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
125 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
126 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
127 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
128 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
129 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
131 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
133 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
136 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
138 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
140 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
143 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
145 or a hash slice, such as
147 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
148 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
150 =item %s did not return a true value
152 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
153 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
154 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
155 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
157 =item %s found where operator expected
159 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
160 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
161 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
162 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
164 =item %s had compilation errors
166 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
168 =item %s has too many errors
170 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
171 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
173 =item %s matches null string many times
175 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
176 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
178 =item %s never introduced
180 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
181 before it could possibly have been used.
183 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
185 (W) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific handler.
186 That name might have a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it
187 doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute name, instead.
192 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
194 =item %s: Command not found
196 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
197 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
200 =item %s: Expression syntax
202 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
203 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
206 =item %s: Undefined variable
208 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
209 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
214 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
215 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
218 =item (in cleanup) %s
220 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
221 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
222 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
223 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
224 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
227 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
228 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
230 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
232 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
233 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
234 the previous line just because you saw this message.
236 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
238 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
239 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
241 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
243 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
244 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
246 =item C<-p> destination: %s
248 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
249 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
250 redirected it with select().)
252 =item 500 Server error
256 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
258 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
259 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
261 =item @ outside of string
263 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
264 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
266 =item <> should be quotes
268 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
271 =item accept() on closed fd
273 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
274 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
276 =item Allocation too large: %lx
278 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
280 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
282 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
283 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
284 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
285 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
286 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
287 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
289 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
291 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
293 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
295 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
296 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
297 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
299 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
301 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
302 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
303 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
306 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
307 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
308 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
309 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
311 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
312 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
313 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">
316 =item Args must match #! line
318 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
319 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
320 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
321 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
323 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
325 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
326 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
327 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
329 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
331 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
332 is now heavily deprecated.
334 =item assertion botched: %s
336 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
338 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
340 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
342 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
344 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
345 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
346 know which context to supply to the right side.
348 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
350 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
351 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
354 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
356 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
357 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
358 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
359 that can no longer be found in the table.
361 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
363 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
364 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
365 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
366 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
369 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
371 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
373 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
375 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
376 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
377 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
378 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
379 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
380 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
382 =item Attempt to join self
384 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
385 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
386 need to move the join() to some other thread.
388 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
390 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
391 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
392 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
393 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
394 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
397 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
399 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
400 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
401 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
403 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
405 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
406 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
407 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
408 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
410 =item Bad filehandle: %s
412 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
413 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
414 did it in another package.
416 =item Bad free() ignored
418 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
419 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
420 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
422 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
423 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
424 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
429 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
431 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
433 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
434 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
437 =item Bad name after %s::
439 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
440 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
449 $sym = "mypack::$var";
451 =item Bad symbol for array
453 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
454 wasn't a symbol table entry.
456 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
458 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
459 wasn't a symbol table entry.
461 =item Bad symbol for hash
463 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
464 wasn't a symbol table entry.
466 =item Badly placed ()'s
468 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
469 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
472 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
474 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
475 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
476 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
478 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
480 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
481 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
482 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
484 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
486 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
487 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
489 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
491 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
492 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
493 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
494 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
495 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
497 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
499 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
500 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
501 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
503 =item bind() on closed fd
505 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
506 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
508 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
510 (W) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
512 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
514 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
516 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
518 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
519 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
520 so it was truncated to the string shown.
522 =item Callback called exit
524 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
525 exited by calling exit.
527 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
529 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
530 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
531 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
532 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
534 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
536 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
537 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
539 =item Can't "last" outside a block
541 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
542 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
543 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
544 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
545 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
546 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
548 =item Can't "next" outside a block
550 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
551 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
552 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
553 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
554 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
556 =item Can't read CRTL environ
558 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
559 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
560 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
561 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
563 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
565 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
566 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
567 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
568 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
569 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
571 =item Can't bless non-reference value
573 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
574 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
576 =item Can't break at that line
578 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
579 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
582 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
584 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
585 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
586 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
588 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
590 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
591 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
592 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
593 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
595 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
597 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
598 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
599 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
600 Something like this will reproduce the error:
603 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
604 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
606 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
608 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
609 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
610 Something like this will reproduce the error:
613 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
614 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
616 =item Can't chdir to %s
618 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
619 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
621 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
623 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
625 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
627 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
628 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
638 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
640 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
642 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
643 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
645 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
647 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
648 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
650 =item Can't coerce array into hash
652 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
653 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
654 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
656 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
658 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
659 or other plumbing problems.
661 =item Can't declare %s in my
663 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
664 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
666 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
668 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
670 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
672 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
673 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
676 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
678 (S) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
679 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
680 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
682 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
684 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
685 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
687 =item Can't do setegid!
689 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
692 =item Can't do seteuid!
694 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
696 =item Can't do setuid
698 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
699 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
700 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
701 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
702 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
703 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
705 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
707 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
708 without flags is emulated.
710 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
712 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
713 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
715 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
717 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
718 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
720 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
722 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
723 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
724 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
725 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
726 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
727 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
731 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
732 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
733 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
735 =item Can't execute %s
737 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
738 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
740 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
742 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
743 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
744 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
746 =item Can't find %s on PATH
748 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
751 =item Can't find label %s
753 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
754 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
756 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
758 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
759 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
760 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
762 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
764 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
765 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
766 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
770 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
772 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
774 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
775 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
776 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
777 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
778 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
779 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
780 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
781 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
782 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
783 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
784 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
785 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
786 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
787 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
789 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
791 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
792 can't retrieve its name for later use.
794 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
796 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
797 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
799 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
801 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
802 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
803 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
806 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
808 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
809 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
811 =item Can't localize through a reference
813 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
814 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
815 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
816 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
818 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
820 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
821 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
822 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
825 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
827 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
828 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
829 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
830 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
832 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
834 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
835 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
836 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
837 doing C<make install>.
839 =item Can't locate %s
841 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
842 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
843 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
844 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
845 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
846 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
849 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
851 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
852 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
853 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
855 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
857 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
860 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
862 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
864 =item Can't modify %s in %s
866 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
867 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
869 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
871 (F) Subroutines used in lvalue context should be marked as such, see
872 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
874 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
876 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
879 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
881 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
884 =item Can't open %s: %s
886 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
887 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
888 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
889 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
892 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
894 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
895 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
896 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
897 and then read it in under a different file handle.
899 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
901 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
902 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
903 command line for writing.
905 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
907 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
908 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
910 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
912 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
913 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
916 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
918 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
919 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
921 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
923 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
925 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
927 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
928 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
929 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
930 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
932 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
934 (S) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup file. Perl
935 was unable to remove the original file to replace it with the modified
936 file. The file was left unmodified.
938 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
940 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
941 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
943 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
945 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
946 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
948 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
950 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
953 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
955 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
956 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
958 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
960 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such
961 as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
964 =item Can't stat script "%s"
966 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
967 it open already. Bizarre.
969 =item Can't swap uid and euid
971 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
974 =item Can't take log of %g
976 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
977 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
978 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
979 the negative numbers.
981 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
983 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
984 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
985 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
987 =item Can't undef active subroutine
989 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
990 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
991 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
995 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
996 as the main Perl stack.
998 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1000 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
1001 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
1002 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
1003 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1005 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1007 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
1008 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
1009 code calling sv_upgrade.
1011 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
1013 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1014 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1015 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1017 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1019 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1020 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
1021 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1022 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1025 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
1027 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
1028 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
1029 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
1031 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1033 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
1035 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1037 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1038 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1039 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1041 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
1043 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
1044 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
1045 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
1046 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
1047 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
1049 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
1051 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1052 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1054 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1056 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1057 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1059 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1061 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1062 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1064 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1066 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1067 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1068 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1069 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
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 weaken a nonreference
1080 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1081 references can be weakened.
1083 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1085 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1086 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1087 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1089 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1091 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1092 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1094 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1096 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1097 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1098 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1100 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1102 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1104 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1106 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1107 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1108 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that the last two constructs
1109 are not currently implemented, they are placeholders for future extensions.
1111 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1113 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1114 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1115 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1116 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1117 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1119 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1121 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1122 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1123 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1124 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1125 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1127 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1129 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1131 chmod 777, $filename
1133 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1134 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1136 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1138 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1140 =item Compilation failed in require
1142 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1143 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1144 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1146 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1148 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1149 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1150 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1151 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1152 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1153 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1154 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1155 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1156 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1158 =item connect() on closed fd
1160 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1161 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1163 =item Constant is not %s reference
1165 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1166 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1167 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1168 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1169 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1171 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1173 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1174 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1177 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1179 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1180 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1183 =item constant(%s): %%^H is not localized
1185 (F) When setting compile-time-lexicalized hash %^H one should set the
1186 corresponding bit of $^H as well.
1188 =item constant(%s): %s
1190 (F) Compile-time-substitutions (such as overloaded constants and
1191 character names) were not correctly set up.
1193 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1195 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1197 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1199 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1201 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1203 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1204 expression compiler gave it.
1206 =item corrupted regexp program
1208 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1209 a valid magic number.
1211 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1213 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1214 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1215 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1216 case it indicates something else.
1218 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1220 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1221 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1222 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1224 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1226 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1227 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1228 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1230 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1232 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1233 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1234 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1236 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1238 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1240 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1242 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1243 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1247 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1248 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1250 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1252 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1253 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1254 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1255 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1256 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1257 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1258 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1259 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1262 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1264 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1266 =item do_study: out of memory
1268 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1270 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1272 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1275 =item elseif should be elsif
1277 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1278 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1279 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1280 unlikely to be what you want.
1282 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1284 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1285 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1287 =item entering effective %s failed
1289 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1290 effective uids or gids failed.
1292 =item Error converting file specification %s
1294 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1295 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1296 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1297 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1298 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1300 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1302 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1303 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1304 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1306 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1308 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1309 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1310 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1312 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1314 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1315 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1316 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1317 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1318 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1319 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1321 =item Excessively long <> operator
1323 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1324 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1325 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1326 variable and glob that.
1328 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1330 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1332 =item Exiting eval via %s
1334 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1335 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1337 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1339 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1340 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1341 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1343 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1345 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1346 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1348 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1350 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1351 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1353 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1355 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1356 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1357 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1358 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1360 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1362 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1363 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1364 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1365 the Perl source code is distressed.
1367 =item fcntl is not implemented
1369 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1370 PDP-11 or something?
1372 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1374 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1375 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1376 the FileHandle package.
1378 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1380 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1381 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1382 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1383 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1386 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1388 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1389 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1390 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1391 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1394 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1396 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1397 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1398 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1401 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1403 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1404 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1405 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1408 =item Format %s redefined
1410 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1414 eval "format NAME =...";
1417 =item Format not terminated
1419 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1420 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1422 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1432 (or something like that).
1434 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1436 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1438 =item gethostent not implemented
1440 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1441 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1444 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1446 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1447 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1449 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1451 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1452 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1454 =item Glob not terminated
1456 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1457 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1458 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1459 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1461 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1463 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1464 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1465 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1467 =item goto must have label
1469 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1470 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1472 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1474 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1475 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1476 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1478 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1480 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1481 is now heavily deprecated.
1483 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1485 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1486 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1487 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1489 =item Identifier too long
1491 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1492 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1493 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1494 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1496 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1498 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1499 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1500 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1502 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1504 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1505 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1506 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1509 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1511 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1512 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1513 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1515 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1516 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1517 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1518 properly converting the text file format.
1520 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1521 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1522 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1524 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1525 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1528 =item Illegal division by zero
1530 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1531 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1533 =item Illegal modulus zero
1535 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1536 don't take to this kindly.
1538 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1540 (F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1542 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1544 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1546 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1548 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1549 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1551 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1553 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1554 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1556 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1558 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1559 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1560 before the illegal character.
1562 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1564 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1565 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1567 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1569 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1570 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1572 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1574 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1575 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1576 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1577 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1578 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1579 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1580 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1582 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1584 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1585 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1586 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1587 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1588 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1589 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1590 for more information.
1592 =item Insecure directory in %s
1594 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1595 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1598 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1600 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1601 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1602 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1603 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1604 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1606 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1608 (W) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1609 as a literal in your code or as a scalar is too big for your
1610 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1611 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1612 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1613 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1614 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1615 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1618 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1620 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1621 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1622 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1623 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1624 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1625 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1626 and execute the specified command.
1628 =item internal disaster in regexp
1630 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1632 =item glob failed (%s)
1634 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1635 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1636 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1637 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1638 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1639 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1640 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1641 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1642 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1643 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1646 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1648 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1650 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1652 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1653 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1655 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1657 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not recognized
1658 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1660 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1662 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1663 greater than the maximum character, or the range didn't start/end with
1664 a literal character. See L<perlre>.
1666 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1668 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1669 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1671 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1673 (F) Something other than a comma or whitespace was seen between the
1674 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute
1675 had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated
1676 too soon. See L<attributes>.
1678 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1680 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1681 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1684 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1686 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1687 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1690 =item ioctl is not implemented
1692 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1693 strange for a machine that supports C.
1695 =item junk on end of regexp
1697 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1699 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1701 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1702 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1703 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1705 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1707 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1708 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1711 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1713 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1714 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1717 =item leaving effective %s failed
1719 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1720 effective uids or gids failed.
1722 =item listen() on closed fd
1724 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1725 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1727 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1729 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1730 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context.
1731 See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1733 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1735 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1736 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1738 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1740 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1741 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1742 ended earlier on the current line.
1744 =item Misplaced _ in number
1746 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1748 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1750 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1751 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1752 one line to the next.
1754 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1756 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1757 double-quotish context.
1759 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1761 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1762 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1764 =item Missing command in piped open
1766 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1767 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1769 =item Missing operator before %s?
1771 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1772 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1774 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1776 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1777 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1778 you were last editing.
1780 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1782 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1783 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1784 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1786 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1789 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1791 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1793 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1794 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1797 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1799 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1800 be created for some peculiar reason.
1802 =item Module name must be constant
1804 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1806 =item msg%s not implemented
1808 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1810 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1812 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1813 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1815 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1817 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
1818 have a name with which they can be found.
1820 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1822 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1823 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1824 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1825 provided for just this purpose.
1827 =item Negative length
1829 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1830 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1832 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1834 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1835 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1837 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1838 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1842 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1843 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1845 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1847 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1848 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1849 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1852 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1854 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1856 =item No comma allowed after %s
1858 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1859 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1860 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1862 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1863 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1864 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1865 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1866 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1867 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1868 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1869 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1870 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1871 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1872 this error was triggered?
1874 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1876 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1877 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1878 want to pipe the output from this command.
1880 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1882 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1883 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1884 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1885 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1886 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1889 =item No dbm on this machine
1891 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1892 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1894 =item No DBsub routine
1896 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1897 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1898 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1899 ordinary subroutine call.
1901 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1903 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1904 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1905 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1907 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1909 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1910 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1911 from which to read data for stdin.
1913 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1915 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1916 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1917 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1919 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1921 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1922 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1923 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1925 =item No Perl script found in input
1927 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1928 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1930 =item No setregid available
1932 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1935 =item No setreuid available
1937 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1940 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1942 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1945 =item No such array field
1947 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1948 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1949 array indices for that to work.
1951 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1953 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1954 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1955 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1956 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1958 =item No such pipe open
1960 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1961 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1962 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1964 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1966 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1967 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1969 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1971 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
1972 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1973 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1974 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1977 =item Not a CODE reference
1979 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1980 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1981 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1982 See also L<perlref>.
1984 =item Not a format reference
1986 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1987 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1989 =item Not a GLOB reference
1991 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1992 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1993 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1994 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1996 =item Not a HASH reference
1998 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1999 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2000 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2002 =item Not a perl script
2004 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2005 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2008 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2010 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
2011 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2012 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2014 =item Not a subroutine reference
2016 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2017 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2018 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2019 See also L<perlref>.
2021 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2023 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2024 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2026 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2028 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
2029 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2030 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2032 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2034 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2036 =item Not enough format arguments
2038 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
2041 =item Null filename used
2043 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
2044 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2046 =item Null picture in formline
2048 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2049 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2050 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2052 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2054 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
2058 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2060 =item NULL regexp argument
2062 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2064 =item NULL regexp parameter
2066 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2068 =item Number too long
2070 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2071 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2072 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2073 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2075 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2077 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
2078 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
2079 on portability concerns.
2081 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2083 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2085 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2086 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2088 =item Offset outside string
2090 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2091 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2092 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2093 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2097 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2101 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2103 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2105 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2106 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2107 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2108 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2109 true. See L<overload>.
2111 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2113 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2114 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2115 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2116 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2117 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2119 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2121 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2122 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2124 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2126 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2127 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2129 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2130 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2131 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2132 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2133 error is trappable I<once>.
2135 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2137 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2138 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2139 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2140 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2142 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2144 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2145 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2146 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2150 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2153 =item panic: ck_grep
2155 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2157 =item panic: ck_split
2159 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2161 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2163 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2164 are in the savestack.
2166 =item panic: del_backref
2168 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2173 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2174 it wasn't an eval context.
2176 =item panic: do_match
2178 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2180 =item panic: do_split
2182 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2184 =item panic: do_subst
2186 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2188 =item panic: do_trans
2190 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2194 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2198 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2199 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2201 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2203 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2205 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2207 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2209 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2211 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2215 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2216 it wasn't a block context.
2218 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2220 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2222 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2224 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2225 invalid enum on the top of it.
2229 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2231 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2233 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2234 references to an object.
2236 =item panic: mapstart
2238 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2240 =item panic: null array
2242 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2244 =item panic: pad_alloc
2246 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2247 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2249 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2251 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2252 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2254 =item panic: pad_free po
2256 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2258 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2260 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2261 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2263 =item panic: pad_sv po
2265 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2267 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2269 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2270 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2272 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2274 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2276 =item panic: pp_iter
2278 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2280 =item panic: realloc
2282 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2284 =item panic: restartop
2286 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2287 didn't supply the destination.
2291 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2292 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2294 =item panic: scan_num
2296 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2298 =item panic: sv_insert
2300 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2303 =item panic: top_env
2305 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2309 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2311 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2313 (W) You said something like
2319 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2321 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2323 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2325 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2326 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2327 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2329 =item Permission denied
2331 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2333 =item pid %x not a child
2335 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2336 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2337 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2339 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2341 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2342 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2344 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2346 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2347 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2348 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2349 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2351 You probably wrote something like this:
2358 when you should have written this:
2365 If you really want comments, build your list the
2366 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2370 'b', # another comment
2373 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2375 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2376 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2377 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2380 You probably wrote something like this:
2384 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2385 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2389 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2391 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2392 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2393 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2394 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2396 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2398 (S) The old irregular construct
2402 is now misinterpreted as
2406 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2407 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2408 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2411 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2413 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2414 Check your logic flow.
2416 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2418 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2419 Check your logic flow.
2421 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2423 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2424 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2425 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2429 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2431 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2432 or defined with a different function prototype.
2434 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2436 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2437 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2438 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2439 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2441 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2443 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2444 Check your logic flow.
2446 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2448 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2450 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2452 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2453 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2454 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2456 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2458 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2459 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2461 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2463 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2464 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2466 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2468 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2469 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2470 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2471 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2473 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2474 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2475 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2476 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2478 =item Reference is already weak
2480 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2481 Doing so has no effect.
2483 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2485 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2486 reference count of other than 1.
2488 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2490 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2491 could match an empty string.
2493 =item regexp memory corruption
2495 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2496 expression compiler gave it.
2498 =item regexp out of space
2500 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2502 =item Reversed %s= operator
2504 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2505 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2507 =item Runaway format
2509 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2510 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2511 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2512 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2513 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2515 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2517 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2518 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2519 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2520 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2521 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2522 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2524 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2525 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2526 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2529 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2531 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2532 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2533 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2534 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2535 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2536 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2538 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2539 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2540 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2543 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2545 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2546 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2548 =item Search pattern not terminated
2550 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2551 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2552 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2554 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2556 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2557 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2559 =item select not implemented
2561 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2563 =item sem%s not implemented
2565 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2567 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2569 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2570 that had previously been marked as free.
2572 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2574 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2575 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2577 =item Send on closed socket
2579 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2580 Check your logic flow.
2582 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2584 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2587 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2589 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2590 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2592 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2594 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2595 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2597 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2599 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2604 Also known as "500 Server error".
2606 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2608 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2609 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2610 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2611 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2612 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2613 for more information:
2615 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2616 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2617 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2618 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2619 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2621 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2623 =item setegid() not implemented
2625 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2626 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2629 =item seteuid() not implemented
2631 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2632 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2635 =item setrgid() not implemented
2637 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2638 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2641 =item setruid() not implemented
2643 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2644 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2647 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2649 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2650 because the world might have written on it already.
2652 =item shm%s not implemented
2654 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2656 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2658 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2660 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2662 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2663 put it into the wrong package?
2665 =item sort is now a reserved word
2667 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2668 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2670 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2672 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2673 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2674 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2676 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2678 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2679 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2683 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2684 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2685 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2687 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2689 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2690 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2692 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2694 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2695 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2696 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2697 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2700 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2702 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2703 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2704 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2705 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2706 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2708 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2710 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2711 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2714 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2716 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2720 eval "sub name { ... }";
2723 =item Substitution loop
2725 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2726 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2727 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2728 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2730 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2732 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2733 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2734 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2736 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2738 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2739 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2740 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2742 =item substr outside of string
2744 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2745 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2746 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2747 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2748 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2750 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2752 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2753 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2755 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2757 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2758 real and effective uids or gids.
2762 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2764 A keyword is misspelled.
2765 A semicolon is missing.
2767 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2768 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2769 A closing quote is missing.
2771 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2772 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2773 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2774 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2775 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2776 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2777 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2778 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2779 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2781 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2783 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2784 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2787 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2789 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2790 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2791 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2792 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2794 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2796 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2797 Check your logic flow.
2799 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2801 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2802 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2804 =item tell() on unopened file
2806 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2807 never opened or has since been closed.
2809 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2811 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2812 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2814 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2816 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2817 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2826 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2827 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2829 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2831 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2832 to the probings of Configure.
2834 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2836 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2837 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2838 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2839 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2842 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2844 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2845 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2846 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2848 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2850 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2852 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2853 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2854 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2855 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2856 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2857 %ENV which produced the warning.
2859 =item times not implemented
2861 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2862 you're not running on Unix.
2864 =item Too few args to syscall
2866 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2867 system call to call, silly dilly.
2869 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2871 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2872 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2873 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2874 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2877 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2878 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2879 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2880 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2882 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2883 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2885 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2887 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2888 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2889 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2895 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2896 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2899 =item Too many args to syscall
2901 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2903 =item Too many arguments for %s
2905 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2907 =item trailing \ in regexp
2909 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2912 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2914 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2915 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2916 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2918 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2920 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2923 =item truncate not implemented
2925 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2926 Configure knows about.
2928 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2930 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2931 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2932 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2933 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2935 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2937 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2938 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2940 =item umask not implemented
2942 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2943 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2945 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2947 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2949 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2951 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2952 contexts were entered and left.
2954 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2956 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2957 values were temporarily localized.
2959 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2961 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2962 were entered and left.
2964 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2966 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2967 scalars were allocated and freed.
2969 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2971 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2972 another package? See L<perlform>.
2974 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2976 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2977 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2979 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2981 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2982 has since been undefined.
2984 =item Undefined subroutine called
2986 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2987 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2989 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2991 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2992 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2994 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2996 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2997 another package? See L<perlform>.
2999 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3001 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
3002 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
3004 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3006 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3007 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3009 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3011 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
3013 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3015 (F) The second argument of 3-arguments open is not one from the list
3016 of C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>, C<+L<gt>>,
3017 C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|-> of possible open() modes.
3019 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3021 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3022 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3023 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3024 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3026 =item unmatched () in regexp
3028 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3029 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
3030 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3032 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3034 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
3035 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
3036 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
3037 place you were last editing.
3039 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3041 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3042 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
3045 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3047 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
3048 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
3049 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
3051 =item Unrecognized character %s
3053 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3054 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3055 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3057 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3059 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3062 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3064 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3065 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3067 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3069 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3070 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3071 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3073 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3075 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3076 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3077 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3079 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3081 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3083 =item Unsupported function fork
3085 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3087 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3088 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3089 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3091 =item Unsupported function %s
3093 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3094 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3096 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3098 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3099 least that's what Configure thought.
3101 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3103 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3104 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3105 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3106 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3108 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3110 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing an
3111 attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3112 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3113 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3115 =item Unterminated attribute list
3117 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start
3118 of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3119 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute
3120 too soon. See L<attributes>.
3122 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3124 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3125 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3127 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3129 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3130 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3131 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3132 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3134 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3136 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3137 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3139 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3141 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3142 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3144 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3146 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3147 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3148 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3150 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3152 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3153 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3154 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3155 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3157 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3158 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3159 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3160 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3161 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3163 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3164 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3165 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3166 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3168 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3169 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3170 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3172 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3174 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3175 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3176 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3177 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3178 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3179 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3181 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3183 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3184 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3187 =item Use of uninitialized value
3189 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3190 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3191 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3193 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3195 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3197 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3199 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3200 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3201 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3202 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3203 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3204 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3208 when you meant to say
3210 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3212 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3213 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3218 when you should have said
3222 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3223 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3224 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3225 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3226 L<perlref> for more on this.
3228 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3230 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3231 valid when C<untie> was called.
3233 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3235 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3236 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3237 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3238 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3239 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3241 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3243 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3244 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3245 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3248 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3250 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3251 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3252 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3253 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3254 on the front of your variable.
3256 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3258 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3259 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3260 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3261 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3263 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3265 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3266 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3267 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3268 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3269 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3270 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3273 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3274 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3275 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3276 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3278 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3280 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3281 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3283 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3284 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3285 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3286 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3287 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3288 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3290 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3291 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3292 will I<never> share the given variable.
3294 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3295 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3296 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3297 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3300 =item Variable syntax
3302 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3303 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3306 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3308 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3310 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3311 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3314 are supported and installed on your system.
3315 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3317 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3318 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3319 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3320 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3321 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3322 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3323 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3324 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3325 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3327 =item Warning: something's wrong
3329 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3330 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3332 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3334 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3335 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3337 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3339 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3340 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3341 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3342 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3346 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3350 but in actual fact, you got
3354 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3356 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3358 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3359 Check your logic flow.
3361 =item X outside of string
3363 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3364 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3366 =item x outside of string
3368 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3369 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3371 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3373 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3375 =item Xsub called in sort
3377 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3379 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3381 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3382 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3383 Use a filename instead.
3385 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3387 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3388 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3389 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3390 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3392 =item You need to quote "%s"
3394 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3395 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3396 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3397 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3399 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3401 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3402 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3403 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3405 =item \1 better written as $1
3407 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3408 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3409 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3410 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3411 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3413 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3415 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3416 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3417 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3419 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3421 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3422 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3423 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3424 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3427 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3434 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3436 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3437 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3439 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3441 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3449 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3450 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3451 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3452 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3454 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3456 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3457 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3459 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3461 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3462 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3463 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3464 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"