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 (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
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 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
137 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
143 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
145 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
151 or a hash or array slice, such as:
153 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
154 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
156 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
158 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
159 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
162 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
164 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
165 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
166 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
168 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
170 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
171 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
172 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
173 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
174 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
175 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
177 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
179 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
180 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
182 =item assertion botched: %s
184 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
186 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
188 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
190 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
192 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
193 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
194 know which context to supply to the right side.
196 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
198 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
199 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
200 Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
201 created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
202 thread. See L<threads>.
204 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
206 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
207 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
209 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
211 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
212 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
213 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
219 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
221 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
222 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
225 bless $self, "$proto";
227 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
229 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
230 which is not in its key set.
232 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
234 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
235 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
237 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
239 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
240 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
241 outside any of those arenas.
243 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
245 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
246 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
247 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
248 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
250 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
252 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
253 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
254 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
255 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
258 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
260 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
262 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
264 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
265 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
266 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
267 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
268 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
269 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
272 =item Attempt to join self
274 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
275 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
276 to move the join() to some other thread.
278 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
280 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
281 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
282 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
283 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
284 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
287 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
289 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
290 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
291 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
294 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
296 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
297 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
298 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
300 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
303 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
305 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
306 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
307 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
309 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
311 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragam to modify the "locked"
312 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
313 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in the next major
316 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
318 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragam to modify the "unique"
319 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
320 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in the next major
323 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
325 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
326 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
327 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
328 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
330 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
332 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
333 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
334 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
336 =item Bad filehandle: %s
338 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
339 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
340 open(), or did it in another package.
342 =item Bad free() ignored
344 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
345 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
346 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
348 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
349 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
350 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
354 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
356 =item Badly placed ()'s
358 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
359 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
362 =item Bad name after %s::
364 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
365 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
374 $sym = "mypack::$var";
376 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
378 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
381 =item Bad realloc() ignored
383 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
384 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
385 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
387 =item Bad symbol for array
389 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
390 wasn't a symbol table entry.
392 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
394 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
395 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
398 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
400 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
401 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
403 =item Bad symbol for hash
405 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
406 wasn't a symbol table entry.
408 =item Bareword found in conditional
410 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
411 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
412 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
416 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
419 use constant TYPO => 1;
420 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
422 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
424 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
426 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
427 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
428 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
430 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
432 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
433 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
434 you need to predeclare a package?
436 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
438 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
439 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
442 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
444 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
445 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
446 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
447 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
448 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
450 =item \1 better written as $1
452 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
453 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
454 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
455 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
456 there are more than 9 backreferences.
458 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
460 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
461 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
462 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
464 =item bind() on closed socket %s
466 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
467 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
469 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
471 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
472 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
474 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
476 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
478 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
480 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
483 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
485 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
486 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
487 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
489 =item Callback called exit
491 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
492 exited by calling exit.
494 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
496 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
497 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
498 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
499 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
500 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
501 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
502 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
503 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
505 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
507 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
508 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
509 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
510 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
512 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
514 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
515 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
517 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
519 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
520 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
521 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
522 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
524 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
526 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
527 be directly assigned not.
529 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
531 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
532 either with open() or binmode().
534 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
536 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
537 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
538 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
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" in a loop topicalizer
547 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
548 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
550 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
552 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
554 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
556 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
557 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
558 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
560 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
562 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
563 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
564 like this will reproduce the error:
567 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
568 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
570 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
572 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
573 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
574 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
575 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
577 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
579 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
580 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
581 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
582 Something like this will reproduce the error:
585 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
586 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
588 =item Can't chdir to %s
590 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
591 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
593 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
595 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
598 =item Can't coerce array into hash
600 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
601 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
602 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
604 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
606 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
607 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
617 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
619 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
621 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
622 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
624 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
626 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
627 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
629 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
631 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
634 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
636 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
637 quotas or other plumbing problems.
639 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
641 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
642 class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration. The semantics may be
643 extended for other types of variables in future.
645 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
647 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
648 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
650 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
652 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
653 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
655 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
657 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
660 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
662 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
663 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
664 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
666 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
668 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
669 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
670 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
672 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
674 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
675 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
676 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
678 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
680 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
681 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
683 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
685 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
686 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
689 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
691 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
692 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
693 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
694 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
696 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
698 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
699 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
700 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
701 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
702 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
703 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
708 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
709 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
710 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
712 =item Can't execute %s
714 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
715 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
717 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
719 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
720 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
722 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
724 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
725 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
726 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
727 for a complete list of available properties.
729 =item Can't find label %s
731 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
732 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
734 =item Can't find %s on PATH
736 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
739 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
741 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
742 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
743 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
745 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
747 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
748 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
749 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
751 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
753 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
754 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
755 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
757 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
759 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
760 example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
761 Unicode property, see
762 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
763 for a complete list of available properties.
764 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
765 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
770 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
773 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
775 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
778 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
780 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
781 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
782 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
783 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
784 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
785 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
786 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
787 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
788 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
789 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
790 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
791 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
792 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
793 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
794 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
796 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
798 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
799 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
801 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
803 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
804 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
806 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
808 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
809 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
811 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
813 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
814 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
815 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
816 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
818 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
820 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
821 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
822 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
824 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
826 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
829 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
831 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
832 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
833 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
834 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
836 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
838 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
839 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
840 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
841 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
842 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
843 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
845 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
847 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
848 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
851 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
853 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
854 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
855 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
856 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
857 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
858 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
861 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
863 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
864 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
866 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
868 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
869 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
870 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
871 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
872 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
873 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
876 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
878 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
879 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
880 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
883 =item Can't localize through a reference
885 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
886 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
887 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
888 that $ref will still be a reference.
890 =item Can't locate %s
892 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
893 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
894 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
895 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
896 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
897 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
898 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
900 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
902 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
903 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
904 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
905 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
907 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
909 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
910 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
911 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
913 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
915 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
916 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
917 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
919 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
921 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
922 doesn't seem to exist.
924 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
926 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
927 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
929 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
931 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
934 =item Can't modify %s in %s
936 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
937 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
939 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
941 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
944 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
946 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
947 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
949 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
951 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
954 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
956 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
957 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
958 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
959 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
960 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
961 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
963 =item Can't open %s: %s
965 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
966 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
967 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
968 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
971 =item Can't open a reference
973 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
974 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
978 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
979 open is not supported.
981 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
983 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
984 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
985 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
986 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
988 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
990 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
991 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
992 the command line for writing.
994 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
996 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
997 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
998 command line for reading.
1000 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1002 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1003 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1004 the command line for writing.
1006 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1008 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1009 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1012 =item Can't open perl script%s
1014 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1016 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1017 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1018 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1020 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1022 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1023 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1024 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1025 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1028 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1030 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1031 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1032 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1033 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1034 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1035 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1037 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1039 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1040 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1041 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1043 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1045 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1046 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1048 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1050 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1051 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1053 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1055 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1056 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1057 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1059 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1061 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1062 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1065 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1067 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1068 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1070 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1072 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1073 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1074 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1075 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1078 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1080 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1081 open already. Bizarre.
1083 =item Can't take log of %g
1085 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1086 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1087 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1090 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1092 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1093 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1094 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1096 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1098 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1099 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1100 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1104 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1105 as the main Perl stack.
1107 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1109 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1110 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1111 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1112 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1114 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1116 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1117 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1118 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1120 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1122 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1123 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1125 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1127 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1128 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1130 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1132 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1133 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1134 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1136 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1138 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1139 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1140 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1142 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1144 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1147 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1149 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1150 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1151 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1152 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1155 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1157 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1158 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1159 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1160 is inside a big-endian group.
1162 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1164 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1165 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1166 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1167 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1170 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1172 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1173 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1174 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1176 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1178 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1179 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1181 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1183 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1184 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1185 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1187 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1189 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1190 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1191 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1192 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1193 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1196 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1198 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1199 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1200 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1201 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1203 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1205 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1206 references can be weakened.
1208 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1210 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1211 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1212 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1214 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1216 (F) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1218 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1224 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1225 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1226 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1230 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1233 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1239 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1240 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1243 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1245 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1251 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1252 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1253 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1255 pack("c", $x & 255);
1257 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1260 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1262 (W unpack) You tried something like
1264 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1266 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1267 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1268 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1270 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1272 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1274 (W pack) You tried something like
1276 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1278 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1279 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1280 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1282 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1284 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1286 (W unpack) You tried something like
1288 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1290 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1291 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1292 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1294 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1296 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1298 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1300 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1302 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1303 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1305 =item Code missing after '/'
1307 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1308 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1310 =item %s: Command not found
1312 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1313 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1315 =item Compilation failed in require
1317 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1318 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1319 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1321 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1323 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1324 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1325 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1326 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1327 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1328 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1329 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1330 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1331 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1333 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1335 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1336 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1337 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1338 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1339 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1340 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1341 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1344 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1346 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1347 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1348 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1349 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1350 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1351 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1352 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1355 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1357 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1358 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1359 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1361 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1363 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1364 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1365 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1366 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1369 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1371 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1372 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1373 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1377 =item Constant is not %s reference
1379 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1380 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1381 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1382 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1383 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1385 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1387 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1388 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1389 commentary and workarounds.
1391 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1393 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1394 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1397 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1399 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1400 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1402 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1404 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1406 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1408 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1409 expression compiler gave it.
1411 =item corrupted regexp program
1413 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1416 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1418 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1420 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1422 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1423 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1426 =item "\c%c" more clearly written simply as "%s"
1428 (D deprecated) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1429 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1430 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1431 characters. This message may not remain as Deprecated beyond 5.13.
1433 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1435 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1436 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1437 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1438 which case it indicates something else.
1440 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1441 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1443 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1445 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1446 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1447 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1449 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1451 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1452 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1453 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1455 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1457 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1458 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1460 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1462 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1463 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1464 that triggers this error.
1466 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1468 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1469 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names are
1470 deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character and
1471 continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces, parentheses or
1474 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1476 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1477 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1478 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1479 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1480 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1481 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1482 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1484 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1488 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1490 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1491 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1493 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1495 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1497 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1498 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1499 to create a dangling reference.
1501 =item Did not produce a valid header
1505 =item %s did not return a true value
1507 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1508 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1509 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1510 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1512 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1514 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1517 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1519 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1520 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1523 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1525 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1526 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1531 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1532 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1534 =item Document contains no data
1538 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1540 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1541 define a C<$VERSION.>
1543 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1545 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1546 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1548 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1550 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1552 =item do_study: out of memory
1554 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1556 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1558 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1559 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1560 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1561 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1562 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1563 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1564 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1565 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1567 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1569 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1570 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1572 =item dump is not supported
1574 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1576 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1578 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1581 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1583 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1584 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1586 =item elseif should be elsif
1588 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1589 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1590 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1591 unlikely to be what you want.
1595 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1596 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1597 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1599 =item entering effective %s failed
1601 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1602 effective uids or gids failed.
1604 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1606 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1607 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1608 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1610 =item Error converting file specification %s
1612 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1613 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1614 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1615 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1616 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1618 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1620 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1621 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1622 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1624 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1626 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1627 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1628 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1629 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1630 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1631 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1633 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1635 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1636 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1637 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1639 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1641 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1642 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1644 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1647 =item Excessively long <> operator
1649 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1650 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1651 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1652 variable and glob that.
1654 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1656 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1658 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1660 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1662 =item Exiting eval via %s
1664 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1665 goto, or a loop control statement.
1667 =item Exiting format via %s
1669 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1670 goto, or a loop control statement.
1672 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1674 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1675 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1676 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1678 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1680 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1681 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1683 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1685 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1686 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1688 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1690 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1691 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1692 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1693 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1695 =item %s: Expression syntax
1697 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1698 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1700 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1702 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1703 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1704 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1706 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1708 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1709 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1710 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1711 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1712 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1714 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1716 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1717 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1718 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1719 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1721 =item fcntl is not implemented
1723 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1724 PDP-11 or something?
1726 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1728 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1731 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1733 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1734 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1735 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1738 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1740 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1741 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1742 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1743 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1745 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1747 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1748 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1749 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1750 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1751 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1752 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1754 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1756 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1757 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1760 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1762 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1763 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1765 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1767 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1768 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1769 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1772 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1774 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1775 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1776 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1779 =item Format not terminated
1781 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1782 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1784 =item Format %s redefined
1786 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1789 no warnings 'redefine';
1790 eval "format NAME =...";
1793 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1803 (or something like that).
1805 =item %s found where operator expected
1807 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1808 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1809 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1810 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1812 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1814 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1816 =item gethostent not implemented
1818 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1819 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1822 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1824 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1825 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1827 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1829 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1830 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1832 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1834 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1835 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1836 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1838 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1840 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1841 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1842 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1843 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1845 =item glob failed (%s)
1847 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1848 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1849 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1850 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1851 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1852 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1853 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1854 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1855 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1856 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1857 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1859 =item Glob not terminated
1861 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1862 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1863 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1864 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1866 =item gmtime(%.0f) too large
1868 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was larger than
1869 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1870 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1871 not-a-number value).
1873 =item gmtime(%.0f) too small
1875 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was smaller than
1876 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1877 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1878 not-a-number value).
1880 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1882 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1883 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1885 =item goto must have label
1887 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1888 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1890 =item ()-group starts with a count
1892 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1893 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1894 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1896 =item %s had compilation errors.
1898 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1900 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1902 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1903 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1904 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1906 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1908 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1909 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1911 =item %s has too many errors
1913 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1914 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1916 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
1920 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a pattern
1921 without an intervening space. For example, the two constructs:
1923 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
1924 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
1926 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow the first form
1929 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
1931 will be disallowed too.
1933 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1935 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1936 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1937 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1939 =item Identifier too long
1941 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1942 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1943 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1944 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1946 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
1948 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a
1949 zero length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
1950 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
1951 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
1953 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1955 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1957 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1959 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1960 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1963 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1965 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1966 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1967 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1968 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1969 to your Perl administrator.
1971 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1973 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
1974 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1976 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1978 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1979 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1981 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
1983 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
1985 =item Illegal division by zero
1987 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1988 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1991 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1993 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1994 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1995 number stopped before the illegal character.
1997 =item Illegal modulus zero
1999 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2000 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2002 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2004 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2005 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2007 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2009 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2011 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2013 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2014 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2016 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2018 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2019 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2021 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2023 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2024 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2025 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2027 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2029 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2030 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2031 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2034 =item (in cleanup) %s
2036 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2037 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2038 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2039 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2040 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2042 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2043 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2045 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2047 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2048 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2049 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2051 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2053 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2054 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2055 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2057 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2059 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2060 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2061 either consume text or fail.
2063 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2066 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2068 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2069 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2070 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2071 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2073 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2075 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2076 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2077 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2078 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2079 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2080 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2081 L<perlsec> for more information.
2083 =item Insecure directory in %s
2085 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2086 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2087 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2090 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2092 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2093 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2094 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2095 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2096 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2098 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2100 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2101 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2102 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2103 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2104 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2105 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2106 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2107 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2110 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2112 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2113 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2114 integers for your architecture.
2116 =item Integer overflow in version
2118 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2119 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2120 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2121 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2122 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2125 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2127 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2128 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2131 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2133 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2134 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2135 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2136 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2137 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2138 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2140 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2142 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2143 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2146 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2148 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2149 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2150 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2151 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2153 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2155 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2156 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2158 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2160 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2161 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2163 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2165 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2166 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2168 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2170 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2171 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2172 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2173 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2174 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2175 escape was discovered.
2177 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2179 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")>
2180 or C<use mro 'foo'>, where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO).
2181 (Currently, the only valid ones are C<dfs> and C<c3>). See L<mro>.
2183 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2185 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2186 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2187 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2188 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2189 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2191 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2193 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2194 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2196 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2198 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2199 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2200 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2203 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2205 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2206 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2207 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2208 list was terminated too soon.
2210 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2212 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2213 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2214 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2217 =item Invalid version format (multiple underscores)
2219 (F) Versions may contain at most a single underscore, which signals
2220 that the version is a beta release. See L<version> for the allowed
2223 =item Invalid version format (underscores before decimal)
2225 (F) Versions may not contain decimals after the optional underscore.
2226 See L<version> for the allowed version formats.
2228 =item ioctl is not implemented
2230 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2231 strange for a machine that supports C.
2233 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2235 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2236 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2238 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2240 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2241 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2244 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2246 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2247 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2249 =item $* is no longer supported
2251 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2252 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In previous versions of perl the use of
2253 C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line matching within a string.
2255 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2256 modifiers. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value then all regular
2257 expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2259 =item $# is no longer supported
2261 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2262 been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2263 printf/sprintf functions instead.
2265 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2267 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2268 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2271 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2273 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2276 =item junk on end of regexp
2278 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2280 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2282 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2283 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2286 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2288 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2289 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2292 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2294 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2295 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2298 =item leaving effective %s failed
2300 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2301 effective uids or gids failed.
2303 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2305 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2306 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2307 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2309 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2311 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2312 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn_flags|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn_flags> or similar), but
2313 tried to insert a character that couldn't be part of the current input.
2314 This is an inherent pitfall of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the
2315 reasons to avoid it. Where it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only
2316 plain ASCII is recommended.
2318 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2320 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2323 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2325 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2326 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2329 =item localtime(%.0f) too large
2331 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was larger
2332 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2333 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2334 not-a-number value).
2336 =item localtime(%.0f) too small
2338 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was smaller
2339 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2340 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2341 not-a-number value).
2343 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2345 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2346 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2348 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2350 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2351 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2352 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2353 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2354 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2355 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2357 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2359 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2360 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2361 instead on the filehandle.)
2363 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2365 (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined
2366 by declaring the subroutine with a lvalue attribute is not
2367 possible. To make the the subroutine a lvalue subroutine add the
2368 lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the the declaration before
2371 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2373 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2374 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2375 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2377 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2379 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2380 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2382 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2384 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2385 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2387 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2389 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2396 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2397 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2398 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2399 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2401 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2403 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2404 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2405 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2406 when the function is called.
2408 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2410 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2411 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2413 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2414 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2415 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2417 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2418 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2419 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2422 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2424 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2426 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2427 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2429 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2431 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2433 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2435 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2436 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2438 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2440 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2441 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2443 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2445 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2446 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2448 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%d) exceeded
2450 (F) Perl aborted due to a too high number of signals pending. This
2451 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2452 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2453 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2454 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2456 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2458 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2459 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2460 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2463 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2465 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2466 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2469 =item % may not be used in pack
2471 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2472 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2473 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2475 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2477 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2478 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2480 =item Method %s not permitted
2484 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2486 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2487 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2488 ended earlier on the current line.
2490 =item Misplaced _ in number
2492 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2493 separate two digits.
2495 =item Missing argument in %s
2497 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2500 =item Missing argument to -%c
2502 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2503 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2505 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2507 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2508 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space (or
2509 comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2510 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately follow
2513 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2515 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2516 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2518 =item Missing command in piped open
2520 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2521 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2524 =item Missing control char name in \c
2526 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2529 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2531 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2532 they have a name with which they can be found.
2534 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2536 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2537 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2538 can vary from one line to the next.
2540 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2542 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2543 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2545 =item Missing right brace on %s
2547 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2549 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2552 C<\N> has two meanings.
2554 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed
2555 in braces, meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that name.
2556 Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2557 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns, it doesn't
2558 have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2560 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only) in
2561 patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short for
2562 C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2564 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately by a
2565 left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if
2566 the braces form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes
2567 that this means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2568 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a C<\N{>
2569 and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2571 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was mistakenly
2572 omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and
2573 raises this error. If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant
2574 the latter, escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2576 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2578 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2579 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2582 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2584 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2585 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2586 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2588 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2590 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2591 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2592 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2594 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2597 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2599 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2600 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2603 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2604 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2607 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2609 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2610 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2613 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2615 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2616 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2618 =item Module name must be constant
2620 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2622 =item Module name required with -%c option
2624 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2625 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2626 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2628 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2630 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2631 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2632 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2633 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2635 =item msg%s not implemented
2637 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2639 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2641 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2642 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2644 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2646 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2647 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2648 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2650 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2652 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2655 =item "%s" variable %s can't be in a package
2657 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2658 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2659 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2661 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2663 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2664 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses its
2665 specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want.
2667 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2669 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or sequence
2670 was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that bypass the lexer,
2671 such as using single-quotish context, or an extra backslash in double quotish:
2673 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2674 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2677 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2679 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2682 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2686 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2688 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2689 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2691 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2692 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2694 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2697 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2699 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2700 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2701 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2702 provided for this purpose.
2704 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2705 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2706 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2707 will not trigger this warning.
2709 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2711 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2712 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than 0 - 9
2713 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2715 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2717 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2718 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2720 =item Negative length
2722 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2723 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2725 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2727 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2728 greater than or equal to zero.
2730 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2732 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2733 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2734 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2736 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2737 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2739 =item %s never introduced
2741 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2742 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2744 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2746 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2747 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2750 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2752 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2753 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2754 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2755 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2757 =item No comma allowed after %s
2759 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2760 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2761 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2763 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2764 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2765 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2766 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2767 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2768 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2769 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2770 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2771 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2772 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2773 this error was triggered?
2775 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2777 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2778 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2779 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2781 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2783 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2784 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2785 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2788 =item No dbm on this machine
2790 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2791 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2793 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2795 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2796 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2797 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2798 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2800 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2802 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2804 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2806 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2807 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2808 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2810 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2812 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2813 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2815 =item No input file after < on command line
2817 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2818 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2819 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2823 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2824 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2826 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2828 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2829 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2830 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2831 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2833 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2835 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2836 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2838 =item No output file after > on command line
2840 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2841 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2842 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2844 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2846 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2847 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2848 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2850 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2852 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2853 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2854 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2856 =item No Perl script found in input
2858 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2859 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2861 =item No setregid available
2863 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2866 =item No setreuid available
2868 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2871 =item No %s specified for -%c
2873 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2874 you haven't specified one.
2875 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2877 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2878 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2879 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2881 =item No such class %s
2883 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but
2884 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2886 =item No such hook: %s
2888 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl
2889 accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks
2891 =item No such pipe open
2893 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2894 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2895 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2897 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2899 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2900 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2901 names on your system.
2903 =item Not a CODE reference
2905 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2906 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2907 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2910 =item Not a format reference
2912 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2913 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2915 =item Not a GLOB reference
2917 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2918 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2919 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2920 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2922 =item Not a HASH reference
2924 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2925 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2926 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2928 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2930 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2931 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2932 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2934 =item Not a perl script
2936 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2937 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2940 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2942 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2943 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2944 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2946 =item Not a subroutine reference
2948 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2949 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2950 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2953 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2955 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2956 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2958 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2960 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2962 =item Not enough format arguments
2964 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2965 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2969 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2970 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2973 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2975 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2976 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2977 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2978 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2979 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2981 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
2983 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
2984 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
2985 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
2987 =item Null filename used
2989 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2990 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2992 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2994 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2997 =item Null picture in formline
2999 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3000 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3001 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3005 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3007 =item NULL regexp argument
3009 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3011 =item NULL regexp parameter
3013 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3015 =item Number too long
3017 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3018 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3019 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3020 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3023 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3025 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3026 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3029 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3031 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3032 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3033 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3035 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
3037 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3039 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3040 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3042 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3044 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3045 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3047 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3049 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3050 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3052 =item Offset outside string
3054 (F, W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3055 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3056 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3057 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3058 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3059 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3062 =item %s() on unopened %s
3064 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3065 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3066 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3068 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3070 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3071 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3075 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3079 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3081 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3083 (W io deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3084 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3085 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3088 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3090 (W io deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3091 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3092 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3095 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3097 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3098 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3099 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3100 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3102 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3104 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3105 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3106 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3107 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3110 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3112 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3113 in the current lexical scope.
3115 =item Out of memory!
3117 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3118 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3119 no option but to exit immediately.
3121 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3122 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3123 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3124 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3125 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3127 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3129 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3130 the largest possible memory allocation.
3132 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3134 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3135 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3136 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3137 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3139 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3141 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3142 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3145 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3146 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3147 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3148 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3149 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3150 where the failed request happened.
3152 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3154 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3155 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3156 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3158 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3160 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3161 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3164 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3166 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3167 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3169 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3171 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3172 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3174 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3176 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3177 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3178 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3180 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3182 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3183 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3186 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3188 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3189 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3191 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3193 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3194 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3195 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3196 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3198 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3200 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3201 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3205 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3206 page. See L<perlform>.
3210 (P) An internal error.
3212 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3214 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3215 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3216 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3217 enter this branch on this platform.
3219 =item panic: ck_grep
3221 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3223 =item panic: ck_split
3225 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3227 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3229 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3230 there are in the savestack.
3232 =item panic: del_backref
3234 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3237 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3239 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3240 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3241 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3242 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3246 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3247 it wasn't an eval context.
3249 =item panic: do_subst
3251 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3254 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3256 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3259 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3261 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3266 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3270 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3271 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3273 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3275 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hashes entries tried repeatedly,
3276 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3277 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3278 adds a new object to the hash.
3280 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3282 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3284 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3286 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3288 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3290 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3294 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3295 it wasn't a block context.
3297 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3299 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3302 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3304 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3305 invalid enum on the top of it.
3307 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3309 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3310 references to an object.
3314 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3316 =item panic: memory wrap
3318 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3320 =item panic: pad_alloc
3322 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3323 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3325 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3327 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3328 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3330 =item panic: pad_free po
3332 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3334 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3336 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3337 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3339 =item panic: pad_sv po
3341 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3343 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3345 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3346 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3348 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3350 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3352 =item panic: pp_iter
3354 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3356 =item panic: pp_match%s
3358 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3361 =item panic: pp_split
3363 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3365 =item panic: realloc
3367 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3369 =item panic: restartop
3371 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3372 didn't supply the destination.
3376 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3377 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3379 =item panic: scan_num
3381 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3383 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3385 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3386 scalar's string buffer.
3388 =item panic: sv_insert
3390 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3393 =item panic: top_env
3395 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3397 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3399 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3402 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3404 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3405 to even) byte length.
3407 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3409 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3410 to even) byte length.
3414 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3416 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3418 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3419 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3420 nesting limit is exceeded.
3422 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3425 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3427 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3433 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3435 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3437 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3439 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3440 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3441 redirected it with select().)
3443 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3445 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3446 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3447 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3449 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3451 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3452 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3453 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3454 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3456 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3458 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3459 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3460 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3462 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3464 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3465 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3467 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3469 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3471 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3473 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3475 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3476 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3479 are supported and installed on your system.
3480 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3482 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3483 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3484 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3485 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3486 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3487 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3488 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3489 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3490 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3491 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3493 =item pid %x not a child
3495 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3496 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3497 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3499 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3501 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3503 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3505 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3506 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3507 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3508 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3509 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3511 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3513 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3514 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3516 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3518 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3519 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3520 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3521 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3522 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3523 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3525 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3527 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3528 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3529 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3530 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3531 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3532 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3534 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3536 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3537 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3538 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3539 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3540 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3541 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3543 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3545 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3546 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3547 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3548 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3550 You probably wrote something like this:
3557 when you should have written this:
3564 If you really want comments, build your list the
3565 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3569 'b', # another comment
3572 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3574 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3575 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3576 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3579 You probably wrote something like this:
3583 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3584 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3588 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3590 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3591 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3592 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3593 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3595 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3597 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3598 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3600 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3602 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3603 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3604 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3605 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3607 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3609 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3610 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3611 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3612 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3614 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3616 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3617 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3618 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3619 followed by the word 'bar'.
3621 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3622 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3624 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3625 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3626 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3628 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3630 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3634 is now misinterpreted as
3638 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3639 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3640 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3643 =item Premature end of script headers
3647 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3649 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3650 before now. Check your control flow.
3652 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3654 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3655 before now. Check your control flow.
3657 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3659 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3660 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3661 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3662 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3665 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3667 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3668 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3670 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3672 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3673 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3675 =item Prototype not terminated
3677 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3680 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3682 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3683 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3684 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3686 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3688 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3689 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3690 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3692 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3694 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3695 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3696 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3697 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3698 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3700 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3703 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3705 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3706 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3707 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3708 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3710 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3712 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3713 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3715 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3717 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3718 before now. Check your control flow.
3720 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3722 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3724 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3726 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3728 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3730 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3732 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3734 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3737 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3739 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3740 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3741 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3743 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3745 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3746 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3747 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3749 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3751 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3752 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3755 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3757 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3758 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3759 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3760 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3762 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3763 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3764 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3765 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3767 =item Reference is already weak
3769 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3770 Doing so has no effect.
3772 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3774 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3775 a reference count of other than 1.
3777 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3779 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3780 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3781 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3782 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3784 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3786 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3787 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3788 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3789 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3791 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3794 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3796 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3797 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3798 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3800 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3803 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3805 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3806 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3807 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3808 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3810 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3813 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3815 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3816 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3817 of the C<....> part.
3819 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3822 =item regexp memory corruption
3824 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3825 expression compiler gave it.
3827 =item Regexp out of space
3829 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3832 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
3834 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
3835 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
3836 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
3838 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
3840 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
3841 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
3844 =item Reversed %s= operator
3846 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3847 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3849 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3851 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
3852 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3854 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3856 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3857 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3858 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3859 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3861 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3863 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3864 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3865 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3866 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3867 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3868 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3869 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3871 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3872 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3873 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3876 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3878 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3879 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3880 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3881 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3882 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3883 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3884 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3886 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3887 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3888 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3891 =item Search pattern not terminated
3893 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3894 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3895 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3897 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
3898 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
3899 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
3900 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
3902 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
3904 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
3907 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
3908 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
3909 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
3910 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
3912 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3914 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3915 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3917 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3919 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
3920 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3922 =item select not implemented
3924 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3926 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3928 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3929 the current implementation.
3931 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3933 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3934 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3936 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3938 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3939 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3941 =item sem%s not implemented
3943 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3945 =item send() on closed socket %s
3947 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3948 before now. Check your control flow.
3950 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3952 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3953 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3956 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3958 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3959 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3960 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3962 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3964 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3965 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3966 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3968 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3970 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
3971 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
3973 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3975 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3976 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3977 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3980 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3982 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3983 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3984 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3987 =item 500 Server error
3993 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3994 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3995 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3996 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3997 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3998 produce a valid header".
4000 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4002 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4003 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4004 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4005 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4006 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4007 Please see the following for more information:
4009 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4010 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4011 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4013 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4015 =item setegid() not implemented
4017 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4018 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4021 =item seteuid() not implemented
4023 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4024 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4027 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4029 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4030 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4033 =item setrgid() not implemented
4035 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4036 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4039 =item setruid() not implemented
4041 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4042 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4045 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4047 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4048 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4049 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4051 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
4053 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
4054 world, because the world might have written on it already.
4056 =item Setuid script not plain file
4058 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
4059 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
4061 =item shm%s not implemented
4063 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4065 =item !=~ should be !~
4067 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4068 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4069 operators: probably not what you intended.
4071 =item <> should be quotes
4073 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4076 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4078 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4079 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4080 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4081 probably not what you had in mind.
4083 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4085 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4088 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4090 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4091 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4093 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4095 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4096 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4099 =item sort is now a reserved word
4101 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4102 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4104 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4106 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4107 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4109 =item splice() offset past end of array
4111 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4112 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4113 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4114 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4119 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4120 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4121 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4123 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4125 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4126 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4127 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4128 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4131 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4133 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4134 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4136 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4138 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4139 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4140 C<can> may break this.
4142 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4144 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4147 no warnings 'redefine';
4148 eval "sub name { ... }";
4151 =item Substitution loop
4153 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4154 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4155 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4156 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4158 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4160 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4161 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4162 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4164 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4166 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4167 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4168 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4170 =item substr outside of string
4172 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4173 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4174 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4175 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4176 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4178 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4180 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
4181 inferior to its current type.
4183 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4185 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4186 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4187 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4188 clustering parentheses:
4190 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4192 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4193 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4195 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4197 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4198 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4199 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4201 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4203 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4204 and effective uids or gids.
4208 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4212 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4214 A keyword is misspelled.
4215 A semicolon is missing.
4217 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4218 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4219 A closing quote is missing.
4221 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4222 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4223 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4224 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4225 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4226 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4227 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4228 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4229 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4232 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4234 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4235 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4238 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4240 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4241 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4242 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4244 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4246 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4248 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4250 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4252 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4254 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4255 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4256 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4257 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4259 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4261 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4262 before now. Check your control flow.
4264 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4266 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4267 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4269 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4271 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4272 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4274 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4276 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4277 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4279 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4281 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4282 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4284 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4286 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4287 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4296 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4297 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4299 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4301 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4302 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4303 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4304 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4307 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4309 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4310 to the probings of Configure.
4312 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4314 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4315 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4316 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4319 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4321 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4323 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4325 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4327 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4328 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4329 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4330 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4331 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4332 target of the change to
4333 %ENV which produced the warning.
4335 =item thread failed to start: %s
4337 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4339 =item times not implemented
4341 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4342 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4344 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4346 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4347 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4348 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4349 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4352 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4353 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4354 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4355 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4357 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4358 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4360 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4362 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4363 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4364 specified an illegal mapping.
4365 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4367 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4369 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4371 =item Too few args to syscall
4373 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4374 system call to call, silly dilly.
4376 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4378 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4379 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4381 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4382 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4384 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4385 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4386 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4387 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4389 =item Too late to run %s block
4391 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4392 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4393 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4394 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4397 =item Too many args to syscall
4399 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4401 =item Too many arguments for %s
4403 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4407 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4408 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4412 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4413 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4415 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4417 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4418 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4420 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4422 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4423 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4424 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4426 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4428 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4429 y/// or y[][] construct.
4431 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4433 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4434 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4436 =item truncate not implemented
4438 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4439 Configure knows about.
4441 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4443 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4444 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4445 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4446 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4448 =item umask not implemented
4450 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4451 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4453 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4455 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4457 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4459 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4460 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4462 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4464 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4465 many values were temporarily localized.
4467 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4469 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4470 many blocks were entered and left.
4472 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4474 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4475 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4477 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4479 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4480 another package? See L<perlform>.
4482 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4484 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4485 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4487 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4489 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4490 since been undefined.
4492 =item Undefined subroutine called
4494 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4495 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4497 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4499 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4500 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4502 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4504 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4505 another package? See L<perlform>.
4507 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4509 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4510 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4513 =item %s: Undefined variable
4515 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4516 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4518 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4520 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4521 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4523 =item Unicode non-character %s is illegal for interchange
4525 (W utf8) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are defined by the
4526 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4527 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4528 them. In some cases, this message is also given if you use a codepoint that
4529 isn't in Unicode--that is it is above the legal maximum of U+10FFFF. These
4530 aren't legal at all in Unicode, so they are illegal for interchange, but can be
4531 used internally in a Perl program. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4532 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4534 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4536 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4539 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4541 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4542 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4543 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4545 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4547 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4548 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4549 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4550 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4551 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4552 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4554 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4556 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4557 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4558 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4559 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4561 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4563 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4565 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4567 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4568 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4569 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4570 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4571 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4574 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4575 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4577 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4579 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4580 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4582 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4584 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4585 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4587 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4589 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4590 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4592 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4593 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4595 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4597 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4598 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4599 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4603 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4605 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4606 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4607 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4608 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4610 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4612 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4613 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4614 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4615 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4617 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4619 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4620 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4621 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4622 you were last editing.
4624 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4626 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4627 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4628 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4631 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4633 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4634 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4635 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4637 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4639 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4640 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4641 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4642 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4643 escape was discovered.
4645 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4647 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4648 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4649 change in a future version of Perl.
4651 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4653 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4654 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4655 change in a future version of Perl.
4656 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4657 escape was discovered.
4659 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4661 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4662 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4665 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4667 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4668 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4669 bad switch on your behalf.)
4671 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4673 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4674 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4675 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4677 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4679 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4681 =item Unsupported function %s
4683 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4684 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4686 =item Unsupported function fork
4688 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4690 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4691 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4692 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4694 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4696 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4697 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4699 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4701 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4702 least that's what Configure thought.
4704 =item Unterminated attribute list
4706 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4707 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4708 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4709 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4711 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4713 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4714 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4715 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4716 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4718 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4720 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4721 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4722 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4724 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4726 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
4727 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4729 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4731 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
4732 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4734 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4736 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
4737 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
4739 =item Unterminated <> operator
4741 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4742 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4743 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4744 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4746 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4748 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4749 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4751 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4753 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4754 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4756 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4758 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4759 See L<Win32> for more information.
4761 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4763 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4764 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4766 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4770 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4772 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4773 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4775 =item Useless localization of %s
4777 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4778 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4779 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4781 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4783 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4784 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4786 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4790 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4792 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4793 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4795 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
4797 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
4798 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
4799 about the /d modifier.
4801 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4803 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4804 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4805 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4806 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4807 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4808 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4813 when you meant to say
4815 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4817 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4818 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4823 when you should have said
4827 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
4828 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
4829 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
4830 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
4831 L<perlref> for more on this.
4833 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
4834 since they are often used in statements like
4836 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
4838 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
4841 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
4843 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
4845 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
4847 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
4851 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
4853 =item Useless use of %s with no values
4855 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
4856 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
4857 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
4858 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
4859 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
4860 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
4862 =item "use" not allowed in expression
4864 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
4865 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
4867 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
4869 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
4870 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
4872 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4874 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
4875 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4877 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
4879 (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
4880 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
4882 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4884 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4885 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4886 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4889 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4890 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4892 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4894 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4895 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4897 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4899 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4900 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4901 used. (This may change in the future.)
4903 =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is deprecated
4905 (D deprecated) The construction C<my $x := 42> currently
4906 parses correctly in perl, being equivalent to C<my $x : = 42>
4907 (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>). This useless
4908 construct is now deprecated, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new
4909 operator in the future.
4911 =item Use of freed value in iteration
4913 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
4914 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
4917 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
4919 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
4920 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
4921 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
4922 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
4924 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4926 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4927 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4929 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4931 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4932 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4933 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4935 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
4937 (D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
4938 scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
4940 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4942 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4943 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4944 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4945 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4948 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4949 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4950 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4951 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4954 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4955 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4956 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4957 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4960 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4961 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4962 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4964 =item Use of octal value above 377 is deprecated
4966 (D deprecated, W regexp) There is a constant in the regular expression whose
4967 value is interpeted by Perl as octal and larger than 377 (255 decimal, 0xFF
4968 hex). Perl may take this to mean different things depending on the rest of
4969 the regular expression. If you meant such an octal value, convert it to
4970 hexadecimal and use C<\xHH> or C<\x{HH}> instead. If you meant to have
4971 part of it mean a backreference, use C<\g> for that. See L<perlre>.
4973 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4975 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4976 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4978 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4980 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4981 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4982 old way has bad side effects.
4984 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4986 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4987 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4988 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4990 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4992 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4993 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4994 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4997 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4999 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5000 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5001 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5003 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5004 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5005 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5006 operators and then you assumably know what you are doing.
5008 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
5010 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
5011 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
5012 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
5013 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
5014 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
5015 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
5017 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
5019 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
5020 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
5021 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
5022 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
5024 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
5026 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
5027 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
5028 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
5030 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
5031 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
5032 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
5033 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
5034 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
5035 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
5036 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
5037 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
5039 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
5041 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
5042 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
5043 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
5044 be removed in a future version.
5046 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
5048 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
5049 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
5050 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
5051 removed in a future version.
5053 =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class
5055 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one character.
5056 Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in a regular
5057 expression pattern bracketed character class.
5059 =item Using just the first characters returned by \N{}
5061 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of characters. There is a finite
5062 limit as to the number of characters that can be used, which this sequence
5063 exceeded. In the message, the characters in the sequence are separated by
5064 dots, and each is shown by its ordinal in hex. Anything to the left of the
5065 C<HERE> was retained; anything to the right was discarded.
5067 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
5069 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of a UTF-16 surrogate by
5070 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
5071 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
5072 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
5073 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
5074 character. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn off
5075 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
5077 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
5079 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
5080 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
5081 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
5082 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
5083 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
5084 C<defined> operator.
5086 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
5088 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
5089 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
5090 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
5093 =item Variable "%s" is not available
5095 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5096 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
5097 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
5098 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
5099 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
5100 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5102 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
5104 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
5105 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
5106 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
5107 now been created and is live:
5109 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
5111 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
5112 gone out of scope, for example,
5120 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
5121 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
5123 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
5125 (W misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
5126 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
5127 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
5128 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
5129 front of your variable.
5131 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
5133 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
5134 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
5136 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5138 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the current
5139 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
5140 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
5141 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
5142 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
5144 =item Variable syntax
5146 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
5147 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
5150 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
5152 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
5153 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
5155 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
5156 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
5157 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
5158 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
5159 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
5160 variable will no longer be shared.
5162 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
5163 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
5164 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
5165 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
5167 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5169 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument
5170 or check that you are using the right verb.
5172 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5174 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
5175 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5177 =item Version number must be a constant number
5179 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
5180 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
5183 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
5185 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
5188 =item Warning: something's wrong
5190 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
5191 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
5193 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
5195 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
5196 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
5199 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
5201 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
5202 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
5203 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
5204 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
5208 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
5212 but in actual fact, you got
5216 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
5218 =item Wide character in %s
5220 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
5221 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
5222 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
5223 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
5224 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5225 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5226 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5228 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5230 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
5231 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
5232 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
5233 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
5235 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5237 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5238 before now. Check your control flow.
5240 =item %s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
5242 When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5243 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5244 this encoding, for example
5246 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5248 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5250 =item 'X' outside of string
5252 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5253 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5255 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5257 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5258 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5260 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5262 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5263 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5264 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5267 =item You need to quote "%s"
5269 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5270 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5271 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5272 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5273 what you want, put an & in front.)
5275 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5277 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5278 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5279 Something Very Wrong.
5285 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>.