3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
21 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
24 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
25 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
26 The symbols C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
30 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
32 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
33 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
34 if you want to localize a package variable.
36 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
38 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
39 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
40 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
41 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
44 =item "no" not allowed in expression
46 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
47 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
49 =item "use" not allowed in expression
51 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
52 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
54 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
56 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
59 =item # cannot take a count
61 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
62 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
65 =item # must be followed by a, A or Z
67 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
68 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
69 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
72 =item # must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
74 (F) You had an pack template indicating a counted-length string,
75 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
78 =item # must follow a numeric type
80 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
81 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
84 =item % may only be used in unpack
86 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
87 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
88 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
90 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
92 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
93 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
94 C<'>-delimited regular expression.
96 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
98 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
99 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
100 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
102 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
104 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
105 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
106 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
107 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
108 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
109 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
110 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
112 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
114 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
117 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
119 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
121 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
124 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
126 or a hash slice, such as
128 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
129 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
131 =item %s did not return a true value
133 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
134 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
135 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
136 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
138 =item %s found where operator expected
140 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
141 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
142 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
143 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
145 =item %s had compilation errors
147 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
149 =item %s has too many errors
151 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
152 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
154 =item %s matches null string many times
156 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
157 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
159 =item %s never introduced
161 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
162 before it could possibly have been used.
166 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
168 =item %s: Command not found
170 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
171 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
174 =item %s: Expression syntax
176 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
177 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
180 =item %s: Undefined variable
182 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
183 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
188 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
189 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
192 =item (in cleanup) %s
194 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
195 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
196 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
197 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
198 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
201 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
202 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
204 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
206 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
207 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
208 the previous line just because you saw this message.
210 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
212 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
213 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
215 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
217 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
218 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
220 =item C<-p> destination: %s
222 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
223 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
224 redirected it with select().)
226 =item 500 Server error
230 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
232 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
233 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
235 =item @ outside of string
237 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
238 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
240 =item <> should be quotes
242 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
245 =item accept() on closed fd
247 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
248 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
250 =item Allocation too large: %lx
252 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
254 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
256 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
257 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
258 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
259 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
260 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
261 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
263 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
265 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
267 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
269 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
270 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
271 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
273 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
275 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
276 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
277 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
280 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
281 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
282 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
283 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
285 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
286 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
287 to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
289 =item Args must match #! line
291 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
292 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
293 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
294 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
296 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
298 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
299 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
300 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
302 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
304 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
305 is now heavily deprecated.
307 =item assertion botched: %s
309 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
311 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
313 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
315 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
317 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
318 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
319 know which context to supply to the right side.
321 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
323 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
324 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
327 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
329 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
330 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
331 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
332 that can no longer be found in the table.
334 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
336 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
337 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
338 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
339 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
342 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
344 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
346 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
348 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
349 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
350 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
351 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
352 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
353 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
355 =item Attempt to join self
357 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
358 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
359 need to move the join() to some other thread.
361 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
363 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
364 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
365 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
366 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
367 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
370 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
372 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
373 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
374 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
376 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
378 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
379 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
380 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
381 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
383 =item Bad filehandle: %s
385 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
386 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
387 did it in another package.
389 =item Bad free() ignored
391 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
392 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
393 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
395 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
396 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
397 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
402 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
404 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
406 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
407 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
410 =item Bad name after %s::
412 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
413 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
422 $sym = "mypack::$var";
424 =item Bad symbol for array
426 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
427 wasn't a symbol table entry.
429 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
431 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
432 wasn't a symbol table entry.
434 =item Bad symbol for hash
436 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
437 wasn't a symbol table entry.
439 =item Badly placed ()'s
441 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
442 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
445 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
447 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
448 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
449 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
451 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
453 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
454 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
455 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
457 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
459 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
460 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
462 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
464 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
465 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
466 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
467 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
468 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
470 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
472 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
473 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
474 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
476 =item bind() on closed fd
478 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
479 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
481 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
483 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
485 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
487 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
488 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
489 so it was truncated to the string shown.
491 =item Callback called exit
493 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
494 exited by calling exit.
496 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
498 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
499 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
500 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
501 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
503 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
505 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
506 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
508 =item Can't "last" outside a block
510 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
511 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
512 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
513 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
514 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
515 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
517 =item Can't "next" outside a block
519 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
520 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
521 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
522 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
523 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
525 =item Can't read CRTL environ
527 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
528 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
529 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
530 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
532 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
534 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
535 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
536 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
537 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
538 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
540 =item Can't bless non-reference value
542 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
543 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
545 =item Can't break at that line
547 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
548 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
551 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
553 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
554 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
555 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
557 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
559 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
560 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
561 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
562 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
564 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
566 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
567 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
568 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
569 Something like this will reproduce the error:
572 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
573 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
575 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
577 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
578 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
579 Something like this will reproduce the error:
582 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
583 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
585 =item Can't chdir to %s
587 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
588 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
590 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
592 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
594 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
596 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
597 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
607 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
609 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
611 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
612 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
614 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
616 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
617 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
619 =item Can't coerce array into hash
621 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
622 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
623 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
625 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
627 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
628 or other plumbing problems.
630 =item Can't declare %s in my
632 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
633 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
635 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
637 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
639 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
641 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
642 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
645 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
647 (S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
649 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
651 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
652 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
654 =item Can't do setegid!
656 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
659 =item Can't do seteuid!
661 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
663 =item Can't do setuid
665 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
666 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
667 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
668 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
669 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
670 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
672 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
674 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
675 without flags is emulated.
677 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
679 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
680 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
682 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
684 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
685 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
687 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
689 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
690 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
691 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
692 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
693 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
694 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
698 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
699 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
700 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
702 =item Can't execute %s
704 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
705 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
707 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
709 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
710 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
711 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
713 =item Can't find %s on PATH
715 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
718 =item Can't find label %s
720 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
721 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
723 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
725 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
726 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
727 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
729 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
731 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
732 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
733 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
737 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
739 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
741 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
742 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
743 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
744 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
745 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
746 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
747 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
748 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
749 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
750 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
751 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
752 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
753 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
754 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
756 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
758 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
759 can't retrieve its name for later use.
761 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
763 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
764 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
766 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
768 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
769 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
770 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
773 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
775 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
776 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
778 =item Can't localize through a reference
780 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
781 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
782 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
783 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
785 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
787 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
788 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
789 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
792 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
794 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
795 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
796 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
797 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
799 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
801 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
802 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
803 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
804 doing C<make install>.
806 =item Can't locate %s
808 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
809 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
810 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
811 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
812 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
813 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
816 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
818 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
819 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
820 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
822 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
824 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
827 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
829 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
831 =item Can't modify %s in %s
833 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
834 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
836 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
838 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
841 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
843 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
846 =item Can't open %s: %s
848 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
849 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
850 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
851 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
854 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
856 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
857 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
858 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
859 and then read it in under a different file handle.
861 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
863 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
864 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
865 command line for writing.
867 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
869 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
870 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
872 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
874 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
875 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
878 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
880 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
881 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
883 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
885 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
887 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
889 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
890 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
891 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
892 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
894 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
896 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
897 you don't have write permission to the directory.
899 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
901 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
902 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
904 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
906 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
909 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
911 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
912 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
914 =item Can't stat script "%s"
916 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
917 it open already. Bizarre.
919 =item Can't swap uid and euid
921 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
924 =item Can't take log of %g
926 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
927 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
928 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
929 the negative numbers.
931 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
933 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
934 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
935 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
937 =item Can't undef active subroutine
939 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
940 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
941 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
945 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
946 as the main Perl stack.
948 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
950 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
951 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
952 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
953 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
955 =item Can't upgrade to undef
957 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
958 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
959 code calling sv_upgrade.
961 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
963 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
964 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
965 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
967 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
969 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
970 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
971 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
972 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
975 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
977 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
978 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
979 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
981 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
983 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
985 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
987 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
988 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
989 test the type of the reference, if need be.
991 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
993 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
994 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
995 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
996 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
997 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
999 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
1001 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1002 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1004 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1006 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1007 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1009 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1011 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1012 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1014 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1016 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1017 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1018 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1019 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1022 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1024 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1025 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1026 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1028 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1030 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1031 references can be weakened.
1033 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1035 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1036 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1037 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1039 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1041 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1042 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1044 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1046 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1047 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1048 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1050 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1052 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1054 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1056 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1057 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1058 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that the last two constructs
1059 are not currently implemented, they are placeholders for future extensions.
1061 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1063 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1064 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1065 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1066 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1067 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1069 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1071 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1072 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1073 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1074 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1075 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1077 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1079 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1081 chmod 777, $filename
1083 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1084 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1086 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1088 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1090 =item Compilation failed in require
1092 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1093 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1094 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1096 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1098 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1099 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1100 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1101 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1102 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1103 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1104 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1105 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1106 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1108 =item connect() on closed fd
1110 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1111 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1113 =item Constant is not %s reference
1115 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1116 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1117 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1118 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1119 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1121 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1123 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1124 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1127 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1129 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1130 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1133 =item constant(%s): %%^H is not localized
1135 (F) When setting compile-time-lexicalized hash %^H one should set the
1136 corresponding bit of $^H as well.
1138 =item constant(%s): %s
1140 (F) Compile-time-substitutions (such as overloaded constants and
1141 character names) were not correctly set up.
1143 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1145 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1147 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1149 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1151 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1153 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1154 expression compiler gave it.
1156 =item corrupted regexp program
1158 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1159 a valid magic number.
1161 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1163 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1164 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1165 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1166 case it indicates something else.
1168 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1170 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1171 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1172 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1174 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1176 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1177 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1178 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1180 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1182 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1183 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1184 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1186 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1188 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1190 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1192 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1193 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1197 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1198 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1200 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1202 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1203 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1204 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1205 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1206 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1207 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1208 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1209 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1212 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1214 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1216 =item do_study: out of memory
1218 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1220 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1222 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1225 =item elseif should be elsif
1227 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1228 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1229 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1230 unlikely to be what you want.
1232 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1234 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1235 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1237 =item entering effective %s failed
1239 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1240 effective uids or gids failed.
1242 =item Error converting file specification %s
1244 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1245 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1246 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1247 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1248 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1250 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1252 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1253 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1254 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1256 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1258 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1259 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1260 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1262 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1264 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1265 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1266 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1267 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1268 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1269 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1271 =item Excessively long <> operator
1273 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1274 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1275 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1276 variable and glob that.
1278 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1280 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1282 =item Exiting eval via %s
1284 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1285 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1287 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1289 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1290 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1291 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1293 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1295 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1296 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1298 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1300 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1301 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1303 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1305 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1306 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1307 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1308 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1310 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1312 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1313 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1314 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1315 the Perl source code is distressed.
1317 =item fcntl is not implemented
1319 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1320 PDP-11 or something?
1322 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1324 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1325 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1326 the FileHandle package.
1328 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1330 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1331 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1332 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1333 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1336 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1338 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1339 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1340 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1341 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1344 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1346 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1347 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1348 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1351 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1353 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1354 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1355 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1358 =item Format %s redefined
1360 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1364 eval "format NAME =...";
1367 =item Format not terminated
1369 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1370 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1372 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1382 (or something like that).
1384 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1386 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1388 =item gethostent not implemented
1390 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1391 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1394 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1396 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1397 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1399 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1401 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1402 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1404 =item Glob not terminated
1406 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1407 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1408 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1409 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1411 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1413 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1414 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1415 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1417 =item goto must have label
1419 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1420 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1422 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1424 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1425 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1426 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1428 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1430 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1431 is now heavily deprecated.
1433 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1435 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1436 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1437 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1439 =item Identifier too long
1441 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1442 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1443 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1444 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1446 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1448 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1449 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1450 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1452 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1454 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1455 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1456 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1459 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1461 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1462 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1463 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1465 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1466 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1467 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1468 properly converting the text file format.
1470 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1471 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1472 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1474 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1475 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1478 =item Illegal division by zero
1480 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1481 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1483 =item Illegal modulus zero
1485 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1486 don't take to this kindly.
1488 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1490 (F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1492 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1494 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1496 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1498 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1499 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1501 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1503 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1504 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1506 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1508 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1509 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1510 before the illegal character.
1512 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1514 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1515 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1517 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1519 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1520 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1521 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1522 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1523 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1524 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1525 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1527 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1529 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1530 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1531 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1532 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1533 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1534 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1535 for more information.
1537 =item Insecure directory in %s
1539 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1540 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1543 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1545 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1546 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1547 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1548 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1549 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1551 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1553 (W) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1554 as a literal in your code or as a scalar is too big for your
1555 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1556 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1557 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1558 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1559 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1560 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1563 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1565 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1566 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1567 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1568 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1569 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1570 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1571 and execute the specified command.
1573 =item internal disaster in regexp
1575 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1577 =item glob failed (%s)
1579 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1580 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1581 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1582 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1583 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1584 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1585 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1586 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1587 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1588 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1591 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1593 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1595 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1597 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1598 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1600 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1602 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1603 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1605 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1607 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1608 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1611 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1613 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1614 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1617 =item ioctl is not implemented
1619 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1620 strange for a machine that supports C.
1622 =item junk on end of regexp
1624 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1626 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1628 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1629 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1630 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1632 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1634 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1635 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1638 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1640 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1641 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1644 =item leaving effective %s failed
1646 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1647 effective uids or gids failed.
1649 =item listen() on closed fd
1651 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1652 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1654 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1656 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1657 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1659 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1661 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1662 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1663 ended earlier on the current line.
1665 =item Misplaced _ in number
1667 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1669 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1671 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1672 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1673 one line to the next.
1675 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \C{}
1677 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\C{charname}> within
1678 double-quotish context.
1680 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1682 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1683 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1685 =item Missing command in piped open
1687 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1688 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1690 =item Missing operator before %s?
1692 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1693 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1695 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1697 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1698 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1699 you were last editing.
1701 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1703 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1704 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1705 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1707 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1710 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1712 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1714 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1715 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1718 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1720 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1721 be created for some peculiar reason.
1723 =item Module name must be constant
1725 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1727 =item msg%s not implemented
1729 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1731 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1733 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1734 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1736 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1738 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1739 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1740 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1741 provided for just this purpose.
1743 =item Negative length
1745 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1746 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1748 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1750 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1751 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1753 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1754 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1758 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1759 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1761 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1763 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1764 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1765 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1768 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1770 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1772 =item No comma allowed after %s
1774 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1775 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1776 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1778 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1779 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1780 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1781 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1782 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1783 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1784 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1785 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1786 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1787 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1788 this error was triggered?
1790 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1792 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1793 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1794 want to pipe the output from this command.
1796 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1798 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1799 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1800 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1801 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1802 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1805 =item No dbm on this machine
1807 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1808 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1810 =item No DBsub routine
1812 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1813 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1814 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1815 ordinary subroutine call.
1817 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1819 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1820 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1821 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1823 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1825 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1826 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1827 from which to read data for stdin.
1829 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1831 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1832 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1833 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1835 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1837 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1838 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1839 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1841 =item No Perl script found in input
1843 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1844 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1846 =item No setregid available
1848 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1851 =item No setreuid available
1853 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1856 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1858 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1861 =item No such array field
1863 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1864 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1865 array indices for that to work.
1867 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1869 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1870 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1871 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1872 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1874 =item No such pipe open
1876 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1877 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1878 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1880 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1882 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1883 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1885 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1887 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
1888 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1889 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1890 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1893 =item Not a CODE reference
1895 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1896 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1897 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1898 See also L<perlref>.
1900 =item Not a format reference
1902 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1903 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1905 =item Not a GLOB reference
1907 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1908 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1909 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1910 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1912 =item Not a HASH reference
1914 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1915 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1916 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1918 =item Not a perl script
1920 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1921 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1924 =item Not a SCALAR reference
1926 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1927 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1928 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1930 =item Not a subroutine reference
1932 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1933 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1934 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1935 See also L<perlref>.
1937 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
1939 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1940 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1942 =item Not an ARRAY reference
1944 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1945 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1946 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1948 =item Not enough arguments for %s
1950 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1952 =item Not enough format arguments
1954 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1957 =item Null filename used
1959 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
1960 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1962 =item Null picture in formline
1964 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1965 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1966 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1968 =item NULL OP IN RUN
1970 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1974 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1976 =item NULL regexp argument
1978 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
1980 =item NULL regexp parameter
1982 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1984 =item Number too long
1986 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1987 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1988 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1989 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1991 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
1993 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
1994 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
1995 on portability concerns.
1997 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
1999 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2001 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2002 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2004 =item Offset outside string
2006 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2007 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2008 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2009 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2013 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2017 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2019 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2021 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2022 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2023 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2024 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2025 true. See L<overload>.
2027 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2029 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2030 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2031 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2032 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2033 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2035 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2037 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2038 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2040 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2042 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2043 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2045 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2046 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2047 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2048 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2049 error is trappable I<once>.
2051 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2053 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2054 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2055 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2056 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2058 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2060 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2061 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2062 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2066 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2069 =item panic: ck_grep
2071 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2073 =item panic: ck_split
2075 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2077 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2079 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2080 are in the savestack.
2082 =item panic: del_backref
2084 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2089 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2090 it wasn't an eval context.
2092 =item panic: do_match
2094 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2096 =item panic: do_split
2098 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2100 =item panic: do_subst
2102 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2104 =item panic: do_trans
2106 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2110 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2114 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2115 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2117 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2119 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2121 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2123 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2125 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2127 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2131 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2132 it wasn't a block context.
2134 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2136 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2138 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2140 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2141 invalid enum on the top of it.
2145 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2147 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2149 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2150 references to an object.
2152 =item panic: mapstart
2154 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2156 =item panic: null array
2158 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2160 =item panic: pad_alloc
2162 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2163 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2165 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2167 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2168 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2170 =item panic: pad_free po
2172 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2174 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2176 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2177 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2179 =item panic: pad_sv po
2181 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2183 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2185 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2186 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2188 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2190 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2192 =item panic: pp_iter
2194 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2196 =item panic: realloc
2198 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2200 =item panic: restartop
2202 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2203 didn't supply the destination.
2207 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2208 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2210 =item panic: scan_num
2212 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2214 =item panic: sv_insert
2216 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2219 =item panic: top_env
2221 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2225 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2227 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2229 (W) You said something like
2235 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2237 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2239 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2241 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2242 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2243 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2245 =item Permission denied
2247 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2249 =item pid %x not a child
2251 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2252 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2253 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2255 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2257 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2258 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2260 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2262 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2263 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2264 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2265 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2267 You probably wrote something like this:
2274 when you should have written this:
2281 If you really want comments, build your list the
2282 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2286 'b', # another comment
2289 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2291 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2292 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2293 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2296 You probably wrote something like this:
2300 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2301 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2305 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2307 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2308 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2309 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2310 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2312 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2314 (S) The old irregular construct
2318 is now misinterpreted as
2322 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2323 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2324 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2327 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2329 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2330 Check your logic flow.
2332 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2334 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2335 Check your logic flow.
2337 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2339 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2340 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2341 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2345 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2347 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2348 or defined with a different function prototype.
2350 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2352 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2353 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2354 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2355 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2357 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2359 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2360 Check your logic flow.
2362 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2364 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2366 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2368 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2369 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2370 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2372 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2374 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2375 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2377 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2379 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2380 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2382 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2384 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2385 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2386 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2387 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2389 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2390 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2391 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2392 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2394 =item Reference is already weak
2396 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2397 Doing so has no effect.
2399 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2401 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2402 reference count of other than 1.
2404 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2406 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2407 could match an empty string.
2409 =item regexp memory corruption
2411 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2412 expression compiler gave it.
2414 =item regexp out of space
2416 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2418 =item Reversed %s= operator
2420 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2421 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2423 =item Runaway format
2425 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2426 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2427 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2428 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2429 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2431 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2433 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2434 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2435 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2436 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2437 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2438 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2440 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2441 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2442 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2445 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2447 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2448 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2449 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2450 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2451 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2452 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2454 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2455 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2456 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2459 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2461 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2462 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2464 =item Search pattern not terminated
2466 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2467 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2468 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2470 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2472 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2473 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2475 =item select not implemented
2477 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2479 =item sem%s not implemented
2481 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2483 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2485 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2486 that had previously been marked as free.
2488 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2490 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2491 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2493 =item Send on closed socket
2495 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2496 Check your logic flow.
2498 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2500 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2503 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2505 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2506 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2508 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2510 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2511 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2513 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2515 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2520 Also known as "500 Server error".
2522 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2524 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2525 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2526 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2527 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2528 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2529 for more information:
2531 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2532 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2533 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2534 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2535 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2537 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2539 =item setegid() not implemented
2541 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2542 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2545 =item seteuid() not implemented
2547 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2548 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2551 =item setrgid() not implemented
2553 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2554 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2557 =item setruid() not implemented
2559 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2560 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2563 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2565 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2566 because the world might have written on it already.
2568 =item shm%s not implemented
2570 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2572 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2574 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2576 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2578 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2579 put it into the wrong package?
2581 =item sort is now a reserved word
2583 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2584 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2586 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2588 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2589 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2590 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2592 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2594 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2595 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2599 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2600 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2601 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2603 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2605 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2606 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2608 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2610 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2611 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2612 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2613 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2616 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2618 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2619 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2620 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2621 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2622 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2624 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2626 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2627 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2630 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2632 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2636 eval "sub name { ... }";
2639 =item Substitution loop
2641 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2642 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2643 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2644 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2646 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2648 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2649 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2650 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2652 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2654 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2655 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2656 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2658 =item substr outside of string
2660 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2661 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2662 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2663 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2664 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2666 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2668 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2669 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2671 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2673 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2674 real and effective uids or gids.
2678 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2680 A keyword is misspelled.
2681 A semicolon is missing.
2683 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2684 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2685 A closing quote is missing.
2687 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2688 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2689 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2690 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2691 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2692 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2693 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2694 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2695 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2697 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2699 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2700 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2703 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2705 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2706 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2707 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2708 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2710 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2712 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2713 Check your logic flow.
2715 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2717 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2718 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2720 =item tell() on unopened file
2722 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2723 never opened or has since been closed.
2725 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2727 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2728 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2730 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2732 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2733 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2742 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2743 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2745 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2747 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2748 to the probings of Configure.
2750 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2752 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2753 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2754 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2755 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2758 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2760 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2761 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2762 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2764 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2766 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2768 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2769 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2770 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2771 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2772 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2773 %ENV which produced the warning.
2775 =item times not implemented
2777 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2778 you're not running on Unix.
2780 =item Too few args to syscall
2782 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2783 system call to call, silly dilly.
2785 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2787 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2788 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2789 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2790 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2793 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2794 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2795 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2796 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2798 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2799 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2801 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2803 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2804 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2805 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2811 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2812 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2815 =item Too many args to syscall
2817 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2819 =item Too many arguments for %s
2821 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2823 =item trailing \ in regexp
2825 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2828 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2830 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2831 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2832 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2834 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2836 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2839 =item truncate not implemented
2841 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2842 Configure knows about.
2844 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2846 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2847 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2848 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2849 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2851 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2853 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2854 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2856 =item umask not implemented
2858 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2859 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2861 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2863 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2865 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2867 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2868 contexts were entered and left.
2870 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2872 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2873 values were temporarily localized.
2875 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2877 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2878 were entered and left.
2880 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2882 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2883 scalars were allocated and freed.
2885 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2887 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2888 another package? See L<perlform>.
2890 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2892 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2893 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2895 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2897 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2898 has since been undefined.
2900 =item Undefined subroutine called
2902 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2903 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2905 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2907 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2908 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2910 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2912 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2913 another package? See L<perlform>.
2915 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2917 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2918 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2920 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2922 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2923 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2925 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
2927 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
2929 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
2931 (F) The second argument of 3-arguments open is not one from the list
2932 of C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>, C<+L<gt>>,
2933 C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|-> of possible open() modes.
2935 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2937 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2938 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2939 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2940 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2942 =item unmatched () in regexp
2944 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2945 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
2946 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
2948 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
2950 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
2951 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
2952 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
2953 place you were last editing.
2955 =item unmatched [] in regexp
2957 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2958 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2961 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2963 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
2964 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2965 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2967 =item Unrecognized character %s
2969 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2970 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2971 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
2973 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
2975 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
2978 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2980 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2981 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2983 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
2985 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2986 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
2987 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
2989 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
2991 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
2992 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
2993 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
2995 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
2997 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
2999 =item Unsupported function fork
3001 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3003 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3004 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3005 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3007 =item Unsupported function %s
3009 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3010 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3012 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3014 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3015 least that's what Configure thought.
3017 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3019 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3020 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3021 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3022 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3024 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3026 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3027 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3029 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3031 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3032 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3033 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3034 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3036 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3038 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3039 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3041 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3043 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3044 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3046 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3048 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3049 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3050 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3052 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3054 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3055 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3056 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3057 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3059 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3060 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3061 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3062 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3063 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3065 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3066 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3067 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3068 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3070 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3071 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3072 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3074 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3076 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3077 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3078 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3079 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3080 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3081 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3083 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3085 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3086 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3089 =item Use of uninitialized value
3091 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3092 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3093 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3095 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3097 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3099 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3101 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3102 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3103 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3104 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3105 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3106 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3110 when you meant to say
3112 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3114 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3115 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3120 when you should have said
3124 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3125 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3126 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3127 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3128 L<perlref> for more on this.
3130 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3132 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3133 valid when C<untie> was called.
3135 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3137 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3138 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3139 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3140 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3141 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3143 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3145 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3146 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3147 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3150 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3152 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3153 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3154 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3155 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3156 on the front of your variable.
3158 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3160 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3161 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3162 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3163 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3165 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3167 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3168 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3169 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3170 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3171 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3172 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3175 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3176 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3177 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3178 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3180 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3182 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3183 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3185 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3186 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3187 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3188 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3189 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3190 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3192 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3193 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3194 will I<never> share the given variable.
3196 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3197 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3198 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3199 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3202 =item Variable syntax
3204 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3205 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3208 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3210 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3212 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3213 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3216 are supported and installed on your system.
3217 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3219 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3220 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3221 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3222 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3223 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3224 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3225 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3226 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3227 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3229 =item Warning: something's wrong
3231 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3232 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3234 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3236 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3237 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3239 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3241 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3242 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3243 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3244 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3248 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3252 but in actual fact, you got
3256 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3258 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3260 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3261 Check your logic flow.
3263 =item X outside of string
3265 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3266 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3268 =item x outside of string
3270 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3271 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3273 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3275 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3277 =item Xsub called in sort
3279 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3281 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3283 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3284 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3285 Use a filename instead.
3287 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3289 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3290 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3291 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3292 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3294 =item You need to quote "%s"
3296 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3297 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3298 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3299 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3301 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3303 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3304 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3305 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3307 =item \1 better written as $1
3309 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3310 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3311 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3312 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3313 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3315 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3317 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3318 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3319 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3321 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3323 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3324 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3325 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3326 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3329 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3336 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3338 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3339 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3341 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3343 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3351 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3352 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3353 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3354 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3356 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3358 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3359 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3361 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3363 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3364 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3365 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3366 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"