1 //depot/perl/pod/perldiag.pod#272 - edit change 14824 (text)
4 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
8 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
11 (W) A warning (optional).
12 (D) A deprecation (optional).
13 (S) A severe warning (default).
14 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
15 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
16 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
17 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
19 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
20 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
22 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
23 category is included with the classification letter in the description
26 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
27 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
28 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
29 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
31 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
32 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
34 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
35 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
36 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
39 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
40 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
41 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
42 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
43 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
48 =item accept() on closed socket %s
50 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
51 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
54 =item Allocation too large: %lx
56 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
58 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
60 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
63 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
65 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
66 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
67 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
68 subroutine is not imported.
70 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
71 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
72 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
73 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
75 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
76 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
77 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
80 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
82 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
83 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
84 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
85 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
87 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
89 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
90 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
91 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
93 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
95 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
96 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
97 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
99 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
101 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
102 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
103 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
104 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
105 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
107 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
114 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
116 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
117 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
118 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
119 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
120 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
121 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
124 =item Args must match #! line
126 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
127 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
128 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
129 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
131 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
133 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
135 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
137 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
142 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
144 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
150 or a hash or array slice, such as:
152 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
153 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
155 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
157 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
158 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
161 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
163 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
164 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
165 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
167 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
169 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
170 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
172 =item assertion botched: %s
174 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
176 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
178 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
180 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
182 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
183 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
184 know which context to supply to the right side.
186 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a fixed hash
188 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
189 the current set of allowed keys of a fixed hash.
191 =item Attempt to clear a fixed hash
193 (F) It is currently not allowed to clear a fixed hash, even if the
194 new hash would contain the same keys as before. This may change in
197 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a fixed hash
199 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
200 declared readonly from a fixed hash.
202 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a fixed hash
204 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a fixed hash a key which
205 is not in its key set.
207 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
209 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
210 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
211 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
217 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
219 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
220 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
223 bless $self, "$proto";
225 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
227 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
228 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
229 outside any of those arenas.
231 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
233 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
234 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
235 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
236 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
238 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
240 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
241 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
242 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
243 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
246 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
248 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
250 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
252 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
253 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
254 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
255 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
256 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
257 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
260 =item Attempt to join self
262 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
263 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
264 to move the join() to some other thread.
266 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
268 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
269 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
270 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
271 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
272 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
275 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
277 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
278 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
279 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
281 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
283 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
284 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
285 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
286 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
288 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
290 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
291 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
292 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
294 =item Bad filehandle: %s
296 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
297 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
298 open(), or did it in another package.
300 =item Bad free() ignored
302 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
303 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
304 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
306 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
307 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
308 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
312 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
314 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
316 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
317 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
320 =item Badly placed ()'s
322 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
323 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
326 =item Bad name after %s::
328 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
329 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
338 $sym = "mypack::$var";
340 =item Bad realloc() ignored
342 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
343 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
344 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
346 =item Bad symbol for array
348 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
349 wasn't a symbol table entry.
351 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
353 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
354 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
356 =item Bad symbol for hash
358 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
359 wasn't a symbol table entry.
361 =item Bareword found in conditional
363 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
364 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
365 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
369 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
372 use constant TYPO => 1;
373 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
375 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
377 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
379 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
380 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
381 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
383 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
385 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
386 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
387 you need to predeclare a package?
389 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
391 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
392 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
395 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
397 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
398 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
399 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
400 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
401 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
403 =item \1 better written as $1
405 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
406 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
407 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
408 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
409 there are more than 9 backreferences.
411 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
413 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
414 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
415 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
417 =item bind() on closed socket %s
419 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
420 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
422 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
424 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
425 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
427 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
429 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
431 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
433 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
436 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
438 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
439 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
441 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
443 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
444 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
445 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
447 =item Callback called exit
449 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
450 exited by calling exit.
452 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
454 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
455 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
456 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
457 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
458 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
459 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
460 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
461 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
463 =item / cannot take a count
465 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
466 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
469 =item Can't bless non-reference value
471 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
472 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
474 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
476 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
477 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
478 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
480 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
482 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
483 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
484 like this will reproduce the error:
487 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
488 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
490 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
492 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
493 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
494 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
495 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
497 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
499 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
500 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
501 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
502 Something like this will reproduce the error:
505 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
506 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
508 =item Can't chdir to %s
510 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
511 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
513 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
515 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
518 =item Can't coerce array into hash
520 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
521 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
522 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
524 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
526 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
527 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
537 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
539 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
541 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
542 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
544 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
546 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
547 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
549 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
551 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
552 quotas or other plumbing problems.
554 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
556 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
557 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
558 extended for other types of variables in future.
560 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
562 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
563 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
565 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
567 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
568 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
570 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
572 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
575 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
577 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
578 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
579 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
581 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
583 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
584 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
585 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
587 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
589 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
590 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
591 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
593 =item Can't do setegid!
595 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
598 =item Can't do seteuid!
600 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
602 =item Can't do setuid
604 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
605 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
606 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
607 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
608 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
609 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
611 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
613 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
614 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
616 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
618 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
619 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
622 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
624 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
625 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
626 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
627 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
628 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
629 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
634 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
635 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
636 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
638 =item Can't execute %s
640 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
641 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
643 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
645 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
646 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
648 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
650 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
651 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
652 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
653 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
655 =item Can't find label %s
657 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
658 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
660 =item Can't find %s on PATH
662 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
665 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
667 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
668 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
669 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
671 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
673 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
674 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
675 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
677 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
679 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
680 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
681 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
683 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
685 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property for
686 example \p{Lu} is all uppercase letters. if you did mean to use a
687 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
688 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
689 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
694 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
697 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
699 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
700 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
701 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
702 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
703 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
704 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
705 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
706 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
707 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
708 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
709 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
710 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
711 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
712 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
713 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
715 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
717 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
718 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
720 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
722 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
723 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
725 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
727 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
728 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
730 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
732 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
733 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
734 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
735 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
737 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
739 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
740 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
741 probably don't want to.)
743 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
745 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
746 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
747 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
748 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
750 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
752 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
753 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
754 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
755 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
756 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
757 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
759 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
761 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
762 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
763 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
764 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
765 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
766 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
769 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
771 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
772 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
773 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
776 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
778 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
779 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
780 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
781 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
783 =item Can't localize through a reference
785 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
786 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
787 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
788 that $ref will still be a reference.
790 =item Can't locate %s
792 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
793 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
794 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
795 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
796 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
797 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
798 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
800 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
802 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
803 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
804 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
805 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
807 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
809 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
810 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
811 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
813 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
815 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
816 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
817 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
819 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
821 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
822 doesn't seem to exist.
824 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
826 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
829 =item Can't modify %s in %s
831 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
832 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
834 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
836 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
839 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
841 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
842 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
844 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
846 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
849 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
851 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
852 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
853 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
854 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
855 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
856 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
858 =item Can't open %s: %s
860 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
861 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
862 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
863 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
866 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
868 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
869 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
870 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
871 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
873 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
875 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
876 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
877 the command line for writing.
879 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
881 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
882 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
883 command line for reading.
885 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
887 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
888 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
889 the command line for writing.
891 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
893 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
894 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
897 =item Can't open perl script%s: %s
899 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
901 =item Can't read CRTL environ
903 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
904 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
905 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
906 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
909 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
911 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
912 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
913 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
914 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
916 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
918 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
919 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
920 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
921 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
922 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
923 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
925 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
927 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
928 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
929 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
931 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
933 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
934 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
936 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
938 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
939 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
941 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
943 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
944 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
945 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
947 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
949 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
952 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
954 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
955 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
958 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
960 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
961 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
962 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
963 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
966 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
968 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
969 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
971 =item Can't stat script "%s"
973 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
974 open already. Bizarre.
976 =item Can't swap uid and euid
978 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
981 =item Can't take log of %g
983 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
984 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
985 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
988 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
990 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
991 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
992 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
994 =item Can't undef active subroutine
996 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
997 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
998 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1002 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1003 as the main Perl stack.
1005 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1007 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1008 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1009 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1010 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1012 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1014 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1015 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1018 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1020 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1021 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1023 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1025 (P) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1026 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1027 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1029 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1031 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1032 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1034 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1036 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1037 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1038 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1040 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1042 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1045 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1047 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1048 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1049 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1050 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1053 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1055 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1056 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1057 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1058 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1061 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1063 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1064 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1065 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1067 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1069 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1070 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1072 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1074 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1075 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1076 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1078 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1080 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1081 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1082 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1083 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1084 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1087 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1089 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1090 references can be weakened.
1092 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1094 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1095 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1096 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1098 =item Character in "C" format wrapped
1104 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1105 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1106 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1110 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1113 =item Character in "c" format wrapped
1119 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1120 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1121 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1123 pack("c", $x & 255);
1125 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1128 =item Cleanup skipped %d active threads
1130 (W) When using threaded Perl, the main thread exited while there were
1131 still other threads running. This is not a good sign: you should either
1132 explicitly join the threads, or let the threads detach themselves, or
1133 somehow be certain that all the non-main threads have finished. See
1136 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1138 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1140 =item %s: Command not found
1142 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1143 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1145 =item Compilation failed in require
1147 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1148 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1149 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1151 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1153 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1154 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1155 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1156 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1157 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1158 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1159 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1160 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1161 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1163 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1165 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1166 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1167 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1169 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1171 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1172 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1173 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1174 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1177 =item Constant is not %s reference
1179 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1180 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1181 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1182 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1183 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1185 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1187 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1188 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1189 commentary and workarounds.
1191 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1193 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1194 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1197 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1199 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1200 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1202 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1204 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1206 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1208 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1209 expression compiler gave it.
1211 =item corrupted regexp program
1213 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1216 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1218 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1220 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1222 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1223 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1224 redirected it with select().)
1226 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1228 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1229 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1231 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1233 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1234 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1235 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1236 which case it indicates something else.
1238 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1240 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1241 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1242 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1244 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1246 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1247 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1248 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1250 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1252 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1253 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1255 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1257 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1258 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1259 that triggers this error.
1261 =item Did not produce a valid header
1265 =item %s did not return a true value
1267 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1268 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1269 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1270 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1272 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1274 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1277 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1279 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1280 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1283 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1285 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1286 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1291 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1292 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1294 =item Document contains no data
1298 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1300 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1301 define a C<$VERSION.>
1303 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1305 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1307 =item do_study: out of memory
1309 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1311 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1313 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1314 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1315 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1316 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1317 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1318 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1319 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1320 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1322 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1324 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1325 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1327 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1329 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1332 =item elseif should be elsif
1334 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1335 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1336 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1337 unlikely to be what you want.
1341 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1342 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1343 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1345 =item entering effective %s failed
1347 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1348 effective uids or gids failed.
1350 =item Error converting file specification %s
1352 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1353 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1354 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1355 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1356 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1358 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1360 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1361 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1362 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1364 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1366 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1367 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1368 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1369 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1370 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1371 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1373 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1375 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1376 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1377 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1379 =item Excessively long <> operator
1381 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1382 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1383 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1384 variable and glob that.
1386 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1388 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1390 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1392 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1394 =item Exiting eval via %s
1396 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1397 goto, or a loop control statement.
1399 =item Exiting format via %s
1401 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1402 goto, or a loop control statement.
1404 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1406 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1407 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1408 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1410 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1412 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1413 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1415 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1417 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1418 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1420 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1422 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1423 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1424 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1425 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1427 =item %s: Expression syntax
1429 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1430 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1432 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1434 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1435 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1436 routines has been prematurely ended.
1438 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1440 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1441 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1442 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1443 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1444 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1446 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1448 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1449 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1450 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1451 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1453 =item fcntl is not implemented
1455 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1456 PDP-11 or something?
1458 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1460 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1461 to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1462 or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1463 the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1465 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1467 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1468 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1469 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1470 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1472 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1474 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1475 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1476 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1479 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1481 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1482 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1483 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1486 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1488 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1489 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1490 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1493 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex;
1495 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1497 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
1498 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
1499 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1501 =item Format not terminated
1503 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1504 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1506 =item Format %s redefined
1508 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1511 no warnings 'redefine';
1512 eval "format NAME =...";
1515 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1525 (or something like that).
1527 =item %s found where operator expected
1529 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1530 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1531 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1532 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1534 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1536 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1538 =item gethostent not implemented
1540 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1541 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1544 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1546 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1547 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1549 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1551 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1552 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1554 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1556 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1557 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1558 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1560 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1562 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1563 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1564 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1567 =item glob failed (%s)
1569 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1570 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1571 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1572 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1573 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1574 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1575 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1576 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1577 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1578 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1579 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1581 =item Glob not terminated
1583 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1584 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1585 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1586 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1588 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1590 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1591 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1593 =item goto must have label
1595 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1596 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1598 =item %s-group starts with a count
1600 (F) In pack/unpack a ()-group started with a count. A count is
1601 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1603 =item %s had compilation errors
1605 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1607 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1609 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1610 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1611 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1613 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1615 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1616 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1618 =item %s has too many errors
1620 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1621 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1623 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1625 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1626 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1627 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1629 =item Identifier too long
1631 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1632 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1633 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1634 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1636 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1638 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1640 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1642 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1643 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1646 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1648 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1649 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1650 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1651 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1652 to your Perl administrator.
1654 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1656 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1657 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1659 =item Illegal division by zero
1661 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1662 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1665 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1667 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1668 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1669 number stopped before the illegal character.
1671 =item Illegal modulus zero
1673 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1674 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1676 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1678 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1679 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1681 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1683 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1685 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1687 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1688 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1690 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1692 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1693 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1695 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1697 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1698 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1699 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1701 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1703 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1704 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1705 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1708 =item (in cleanup) %s
1710 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1711 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1712 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1713 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1714 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1716 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1717 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1719 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1721 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1722 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1723 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1725 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1727 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1728 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1729 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1730 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1731 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1732 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1733 L<perlsec> for more information.
1735 =item Insecure directory in %s
1737 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1738 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1739 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1741 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1743 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1744 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1745 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1746 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1747 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1749 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1751 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1752 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1753 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1754 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1755 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1756 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1757 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1758 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1761 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1763 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1764 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1767 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1769 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1770 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1771 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1772 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1773 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1774 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1776 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1778 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1779 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1782 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1784 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1785 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1786 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1787 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1789 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1791 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1792 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1794 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1796 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1797 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1799 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1801 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1802 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1804 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1806 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1807 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1808 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1809 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1810 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1812 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator
1814 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1815 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1817 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1819 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1820 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1821 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1824 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1826 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1827 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1830 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1832 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1834 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1837 =item ioctl is not implemented
1839 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1840 strange for a machine that supports C.
1842 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1844 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1845 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1847 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1849 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1850 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1852 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1854 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1855 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1858 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1860 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1863 =item junk on end of regexp
1865 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1867 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1869 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1870 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1873 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1875 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1876 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1879 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1881 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1882 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1885 =item leaving effective %s failed
1887 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1888 effective uids or gids failed.
1890 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1892 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1893 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1896 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1898 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1899 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1900 instead on the filehandle.)
1902 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1904 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1905 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1906 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1908 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex;
1910 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1912 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1913 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1914 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1916 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1918 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1925 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1926 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1927 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1928 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
1930 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
1932 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
1933 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
1934 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
1935 when the function is called.
1937 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
1939 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
1941 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
1942 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
1943 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
1945 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
1947 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
1948 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
1950 =item %s matches null string many times in regex;
1952 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1954 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1955 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
1956 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1959 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
1961 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
1962 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
1965 =item % may only be used in unpack
1967 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1968 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1969 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1971 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1973 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1974 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1976 =item Method %s not permitted
1980 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1982 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1983 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1984 ended earlier on the current line.
1986 =item Misplaced _ in number
1988 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
1989 separate two digits.
1991 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1993 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1994 double-quotish context.
1996 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1998 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1999 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2001 =item Missing command in piped open
2003 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2004 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2007 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2009 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2010 they have a name with which they can be found.
2012 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2014 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2015 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2016 can vary from one line to the next.
2018 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2020 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2021 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2023 =item Missing right brace on %s
2025 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2027 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2029 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2030 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2033 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2035 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2036 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2037 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2039 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2041 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2042 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2043 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2045 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2048 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2050 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2051 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2054 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2055 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2058 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2060 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2061 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2064 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2066 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2067 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2069 =item Module name must be constant
2071 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2073 =item Module name required with -%c option
2075 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2076 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2077 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2079 =item More than one argument to open
2081 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2082 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2083 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2084 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2086 =item msg%s not implemented
2088 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2090 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2092 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2093 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2095 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
2097 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2098 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2099 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2101 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
2103 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
2104 must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
2105 of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2107 =item / must follow a numeric type
2109 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
2110 follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2112 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2114 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2117 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2119 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2120 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2121 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2123 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2125 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2126 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2127 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2128 provided for this purpose.
2130 =item Negative length
2132 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2133 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2135 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2137 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2138 greater than or equal to zero.
2140 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2142 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2143 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2144 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2146 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2147 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2149 =item %s never introduced
2151 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2152 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2154 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2156 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2157 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2158 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2159 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2161 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2163 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2165 =item No comma allowed after %s
2167 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2168 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2169 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2171 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2172 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2173 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2174 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2175 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2176 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2177 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2178 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2179 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2180 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2181 this error was triggered?
2183 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2185 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2186 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2187 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2189 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2191 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2192 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2193 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2194 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2195 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2197 =item No dbm on this machine
2199 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2200 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2202 =item No DBsub routine
2204 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2205 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2206 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2207 ordinary subroutine call.
2209 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2211 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2212 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2213 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2215 =item No input file after < on command line
2217 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2218 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2219 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2223 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2224 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2226 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2228 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2229 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2231 =item No output file after > on command line
2233 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2234 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2235 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2237 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2239 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2240 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2241 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2243 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2245 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2246 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2247 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2249 =item No Perl script found in input
2251 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2252 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2254 =item No setregid available
2256 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2259 =item No setreuid available
2261 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2264 =item No space allowed after -%c
2266 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2267 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2269 =item No %s specified for -%c
2271 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2272 you haven't specified one.
2274 =item No such class %s
2276 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2277 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2279 =item No such pipe open
2281 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2282 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2283 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2285 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2287 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2288 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2289 array indices for that to work.
2291 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2293 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2294 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2295 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2296 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2298 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2300 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2301 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2302 names on your system.
2304 =item Not a CODE reference
2306 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2307 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2308 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2311 =item Not a format reference
2313 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2314 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2316 =item Not a GLOB reference
2318 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2319 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2320 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2321 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2323 =item Not a HASH reference
2325 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2326 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2327 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2329 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2331 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2332 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2333 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2335 =item Not a perl script
2337 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2338 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2341 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2343 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2344 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2345 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2347 =item Not a subroutine reference
2349 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2350 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2351 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2354 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2356 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2357 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2359 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2361 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2363 =item Not enough format arguments
2365 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2366 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2370 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2371 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2374 =item %s not allowed in length fields
2376 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
2377 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes. Redesign
2380 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2382 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2383 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2384 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2385 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2386 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2388 =item Null filename used
2390 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2391 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2393 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2395 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2398 =item Null picture in formline
2400 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2401 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2402 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2406 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2408 =item NULL regexp argument
2410 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2412 =item NULL regexp parameter
2414 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2416 =item Number too long
2418 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2419 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2420 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2421 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2424 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2426 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2427 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2430 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2432 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2433 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2434 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2436 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2438 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2440 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2441 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2443 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2445 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2446 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2448 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2450 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2451 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2453 =item Offset outside string
2455 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2456 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2457 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2458 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2460 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2462 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2463 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2465 =item %s() on unopened %s
2467 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2468 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2469 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2473 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2477 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2479 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2481 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2482 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2483 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2484 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2486 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2488 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2489 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2490 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2491 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2494 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2496 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2497 in the current lexical scope.
2499 =item Out of memory!
2501 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2502 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2503 no option but to exit immediately.
2505 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2507 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2508 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2509 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2510 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2512 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2514 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2515 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2518 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2519 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2520 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2521 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2522 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2523 where the failed request happened.
2525 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2527 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2528 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2529 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2531 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2533 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2534 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2537 =item @ outside of string
2539 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2540 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2542 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2544 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2545 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2546 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2547 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2551 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2552 page. See L<perlform>.
2556 (P) An internal error.
2558 =item panic: ck_grep
2560 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2562 =item panic: ck_split
2564 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2566 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2568 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2569 there are in the savestack.
2571 =item panic: del_backref
2573 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2578 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2579 it wasn't an eval context.
2581 =item panic: pp_match%s
2583 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2586 =item panic: do_subst
2588 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2591 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2593 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2598 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2602 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2603 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2605 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2607 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2609 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2611 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2613 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2615 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2619 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2620 it wasn't a block context.
2622 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2624 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2627 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2629 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2630 invalid enum on the top of it.
2632 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2634 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2635 references to an object.
2639 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2641 =item panic: mapstart
2643 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2645 =item panic: null array
2647 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2649 =item panic: pad_alloc
2651 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2652 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2654 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2656 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2657 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2659 =item panic: pad_free po
2661 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2663 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2665 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2666 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2668 =item panic: pad_sv po
2670 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2672 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2674 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2675 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2677 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2679 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2681 =item panic: pp_iter
2683 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2685 =item panic: pp_split
2687 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2689 =item panic: realloc
2691 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2693 =item panic: restartop
2695 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2696 didn't supply the destination.
2700 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2701 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2703 =item panic: scan_num
2705 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2707 =item panic: sv_insert
2709 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2712 =item panic: top_env
2714 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2718 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2720 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2722 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2723 to even) byte length.
2725 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2727 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2733 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2735 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2737 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2739 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2740 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2741 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2743 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2745 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2746 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2748 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2750 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2752 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2753 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2756 are supported and installed on your system.
2757 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2759 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2760 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2761 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2762 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2763 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2764 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2765 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2766 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2767 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2768 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2770 =item perlio: argument list not closed for layer "%s"
2772 (S) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you forgot
2773 the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
2774 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
2775 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
2776 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
2777 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2779 =item perlio: invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2781 (S) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2782 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2783 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2784 list was terminated too soon.
2786 =item perlio: unknown layer "%s"
2788 (S) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
2789 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
2790 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
2791 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
2792 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
2793 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2795 =item Permission denied
2797 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2799 =item pid %x not a child
2801 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2802 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2803 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2805 =item P must have an explicit size
2807 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2809 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex;
2811 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2813 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2814 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2815 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2816 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2817 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2818 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2820 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2822 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2824 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2825 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2826 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2827 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2828 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2829 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2831 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2833 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2835 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2836 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2837 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2838 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2839 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2840 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2842 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex;
2844 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2846 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2847 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2848 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2849 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2850 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2852 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2854 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2855 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2857 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2859 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2860 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2861 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2862 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2864 You probably wrote something like this:
2871 when you should have written this:
2878 If you really want comments, build your list the
2879 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2883 'b', # another comment
2886 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2888 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2889 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2890 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2893 You probably wrote something like this:
2897 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2898 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2902 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2904 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2905 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2906 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2907 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2909 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
2911 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
2912 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
2913 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
2914 to the array you apparently lost track of.
2916 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2918 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2919 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2921 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2923 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
2927 use attrs qw(locked);
2930 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2936 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2937 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2939 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2941 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2945 is now misinterpreted as
2949 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2950 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2951 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2954 =item Premature end of script headers
2958 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2960 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
2961 before now. Check your control flow.
2963 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2965 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
2966 before now. Check your control flow.
2968 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2970 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2971 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2972 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2973 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2976 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2978 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2979 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
2981 =item Prototype not terminated
2983 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
2986 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex;
2988 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2990 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
2991 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
2992 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2994 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression;
2996 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2998 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2999 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3000 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3001 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3002 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3004 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3007 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3009 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3010 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3011 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3012 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3014 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3016 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3017 before now. Check your control flow.
3019 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3021 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3023 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3025 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3028 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3030 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3031 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3032 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3034 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3036 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3037 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3039 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3041 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3042 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3045 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3047 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3048 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3049 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3050 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3052 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3053 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3054 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3055 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3057 =item Reference is already weak
3059 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3060 Doing so has no effect.
3062 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3064 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3065 a reference count of other than 1.
3067 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex;
3069 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3071 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3072 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3073 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3074 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3076 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3079 =item regexp memory corruption
3081 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3082 expression compiler gave it.
3084 =item Regexp out of space
3086 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3089 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
3091 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3092 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3094 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
3096 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3097 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3099 =item Reversed %s= operator
3101 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3102 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3104 =item Runaway format
3106 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3107 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3108 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3109 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3110 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3112 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3114 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3115 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3116 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3117 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3118 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3119 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3120 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3122 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3123 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3124 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3127 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3129 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3130 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3131 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3132 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3133 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3134 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3135 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3137 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3138 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3139 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3142 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3144 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3145 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3146 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3147 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3149 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3151 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3152 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3154 =item Search pattern not terminated
3156 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3157 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3158 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3160 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3162 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3163 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3165 =item select not implemented
3167 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3169 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3171 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3172 the current implementation.
3174 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3176 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3177 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3179 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3181 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3182 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3184 =item sem%s not implemented
3186 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3188 =item send() on closed socket %s
3190 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3191 before now. Check your control flow.
3193 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3195 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3196 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3199 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex;
3201 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3203 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3204 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3205 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3208 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex;
3210 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3212 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3213 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3214 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3216 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex;
3218 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3220 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3221 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3222 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3224 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex;
3226 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3228 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3229 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3230 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3233 =item 500 Server error
3239 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3240 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3241 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3242 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3243 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3244 produce a valid header".
3246 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3248 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3249 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3250 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3251 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3252 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3253 Please see the following for more information:
3255 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3256 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3257 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3259 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3261 =item setegid() not implemented
3263 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3264 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3267 =item seteuid() not implemented
3269 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3270 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3273 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3275 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3276 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3279 =item setrgid() not implemented
3281 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3282 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3285 =item setruid() not implemented
3287 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3288 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3291 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3293 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3294 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3295 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3297 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3299 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3300 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3302 =item shm%s not implemented
3304 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3306 =item <> should be quotes
3308 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3311 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3313 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3314 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3315 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3316 probably not what you had in mind.
3318 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3320 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3323 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3325 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3326 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3328 =item sort is now a reserved word
3330 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3331 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3333 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3335 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3336 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3337 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3339 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3341 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3342 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3344 =item splice() offset past end of array
3346 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3347 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3348 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3349 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3354 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3355 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3356 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3358 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3360 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3361 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3362 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3363 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3366 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3368 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3369 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3371 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3373 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3374 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3375 C<can> may break this.
3377 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3379 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3382 no warnings 'redefine';
3383 eval "sub name { ... }";
3386 =item Substitution loop
3388 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3389 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3390 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3391 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3393 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3395 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3396 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3397 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3399 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3401 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3402 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3403 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3405 =item substr outside of string
3407 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3408 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3409 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3410 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3411 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3413 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3415 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3416 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3418 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex;
3420 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3422 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3423 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3424 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3425 clustering parentheses:
3427 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3429 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3430 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3432 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex;
3434 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3436 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3437 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3438 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3440 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3442 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3443 and effective uids or gids.
3447 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3449 A keyword is misspelled.
3450 A semicolon is missing.
3452 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3453 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3454 A closing quote is missing.
3456 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3457 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3458 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3459 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3460 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3461 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3462 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3463 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3464 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3467 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3469 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3470 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3473 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3475 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3476 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3477 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3481 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3483 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3485 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3486 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3487 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3488 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3490 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3492 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3493 before now. Check your control flow.
3495 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3497 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3498 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3500 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3502 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3503 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3505 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3507 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3508 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3517 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3518 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3520 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3522 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3523 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3524 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3525 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3528 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3530 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3531 to the probings of Configure.
3533 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3535 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3536 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3537 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3540 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3542 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3544 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3545 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3546 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3547 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3548 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3549 target of the change to
3550 %ENV which produced the warning.
3552 =item times not implemented
3554 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3555 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3557 =item Too few args to syscall
3559 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3560 system call to call, silly dilly.
3562 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3564 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3565 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3566 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3567 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3570 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3571 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3572 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3573 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3575 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3576 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3578 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3580 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3581 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3582 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3584 =item Too late to run %s block
3586 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3587 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3588 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3589 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3592 =item Too many args to syscall
3594 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3596 =item Too many arguments for %s
3598 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3604 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3605 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3607 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3609 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3610 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3612 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3614 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3615 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3616 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3618 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3620 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3623 =item truncate not implemented
3625 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3626 Configure knows about.
3628 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3630 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3631 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3632 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3633 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3635 =item umask not implemented
3637 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3638 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3640 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3642 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3644 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3646 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3647 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3649 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3651 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3652 many values were temporarily localized.
3654 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3656 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3657 many blocks were entered and left.
3659 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3661 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3662 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3664 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3666 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3667 another package? See L<perlform>.
3669 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3671 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3672 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3674 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3676 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3677 since been undefined.
3679 =item Undefined subroutine called
3681 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3682 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3684 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3686 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3687 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3689 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3691 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3692 another package? See L<perlform>.
3694 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3696 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3697 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3700 =item %s: Undefined variable
3702 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3703 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3705 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3707 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3708 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3710 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3712 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3713 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3714 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3716 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3718 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3721 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3723 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3725 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex;
3727 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3729 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3730 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3731 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3732 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3733 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3736 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3737 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3739 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3741 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3742 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3743 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3745 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3747 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3748 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3749 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3750 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3752 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3754 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
3755 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
3757 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
3758 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
3761 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3763 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3764 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3765 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3766 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3768 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3770 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3771 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3772 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3773 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3775 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3777 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3778 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3779 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3780 you were last editing.
3782 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3784 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3785 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3786 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3789 =item Unrecognized character %s
3791 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3792 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3793 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3795 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3797 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3798 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3799 understood literally.
3801 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex;
3803 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3805 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3806 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3807 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
3808 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3809 escape was discovered.
3811 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3813 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3816 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3818 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3819 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3822 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3824 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3825 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3826 bad switch on your behalf.)
3828 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3830 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3831 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3832 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3834 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3836 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3838 =item Unsupported function %s
3840 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3841 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3843 =item Unsupported function fork
3845 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3847 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3848 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3849 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3851 =item Unsupported script encoding
3853 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
3854 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
3856 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3858 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3859 least that's what Configure thought.
3861 =item Unterminated attribute list
3863 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3864 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3865 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3866 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
3868 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3870 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3871 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3872 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3873 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3875 =item Unterminated compressed integer
3877 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3878 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3879 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3881 =item Unterminated <> operator
3883 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3884 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3885 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3886 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3888 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3890 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3891 still valid when C<untie> was called.
3893 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex;
3895 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3897 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
3898 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
3900 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
3904 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
3906 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3907 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3909 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex;
3911 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3913 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
3914 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
3916 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
3920 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
3922 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3923 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3925 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3927 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3928 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3929 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3930 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3931 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3932 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3937 when you meant to say
3939 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3941 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3942 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3947 when you should have said
3951 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3952 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3953 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3954 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3955 L<perlref> for more on this.
3957 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
3958 since they are often used in statements like
3960 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
3962 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
3965 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3967 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3969 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
3971 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
3975 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
3977 =item Useless use of %s with no values
3979 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
3980 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
3981 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
3982 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
3983 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
3984 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
3986 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3988 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3989 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3991 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3993 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3994 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3996 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
3998 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
3999 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4001 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4003 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4004 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4005 used. (This may change in the future.)
4007 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4009 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4010 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4011 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4013 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4015 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4016 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4018 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4020 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4021 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4022 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4025 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4026 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4028 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4030 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4031 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4032 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4034 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4036 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4037 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4038 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4039 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4042 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4043 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4044 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4045 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4048 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4049 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4050 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4051 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4054 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4055 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4056 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4058 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4060 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4061 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4062 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4064 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4066 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4067 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4068 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4071 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4073 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4074 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4076 =item Use of $* is deprecated
4078 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
4079 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
4080 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
4081 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
4083 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4085 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4086 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4087 old way has bad side effects.
4089 =item Use of $# is deprecated
4091 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
4092 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4094 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4096 (W) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4097 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4098 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4100 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4101 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4102 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4103 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4105 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4107 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4108 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4109 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4110 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4111 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4112 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4114 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4116 (W taint) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4117 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4118 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4119 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4121 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4123 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4124 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4125 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4127 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4128 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4129 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4130 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4131 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4132 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4135 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4137 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4138 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4139 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4140 be removed in a future version.
4142 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4144 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4145 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4146 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4147 removed in a future version.
4149 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4151 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4152 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4153 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4154 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4155 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4156 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4157 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4159 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4161 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4162 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4163 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4164 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4165 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4166 C<defined> operator.
4168 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4170 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4171 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4172 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4175 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4177 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4178 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4179 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4180 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4181 front of your variable.
4183 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4185 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4186 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4187 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4188 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4189 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4191 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
4193 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
4194 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
4195 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
4196 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
4198 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
4200 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
4201 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
4202 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
4203 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
4204 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
4205 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
4207 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
4208 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
4209 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
4210 between interferes with this feature.
4212 =item Variable syntax
4214 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4215 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4218 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4220 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4221 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
4223 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
4224 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4225 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4226 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4227 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4228 variable will no longer be shared.
4230 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
4231 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
4232 will I<never> share the given variable.
4234 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4235 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4236 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
4237 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4239 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex;
4241 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4243 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4244 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4245 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4247 =item Version number must be a constant number
4249 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4250 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4253 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4255 (W) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4256 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4257 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4258 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4259 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4260 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4263 =item Warning: something's wrong
4265 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4266 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4268 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4270 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4271 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4274 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4276 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4277 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4278 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4279 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4283 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4287 but in actual fact, you got
4291 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4293 =item Wide character in %s
4295 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4296 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print) but can be
4297 turned off by C<no warnings 'utf8';>. You are supposed to explicitly
4298 mark the filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4300 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4302 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4303 before now. Check your control flow.
4305 =item X outside of string
4307 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
4308 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4310 =item x outside of string
4312 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4313 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4315 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4317 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4320 =item Xsub called in sort
4322 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4325 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4327 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4328 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4329 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4332 =item You need to quote "%s"
4334 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4335 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4336 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4337 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4338 what you want, put an & in front.)