3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
22 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
23 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
24 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
27 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
28 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
29 Since the messages are listed in alphabetical order, the symbols
30 C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
34 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
36 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that
39 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
41 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
42 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
43 if you want to localize a package variable.
45 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
47 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
48 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
49 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
50 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
53 =item "no" not allowed in expression
55 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
56 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
58 =item "use" not allowed in expression
60 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
61 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
63 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
65 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
68 =item / cannot take a count
70 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
71 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
74 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
76 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
77 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
78 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
81 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
83 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
84 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
87 =item / must follow a numeric type
89 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
90 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
93 =item % may only be used in unpack
95 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
96 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
97 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
99 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
101 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
102 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
104 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
106 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
107 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
109 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
111 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
112 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
113 C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood literally.
115 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
117 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
118 by Perl inside character classes. The character was understood literally.
120 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
122 (W) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
123 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true
124 or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string,
125 which is probably not what you had in mind.
127 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
129 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
130 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
131 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
133 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
135 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
136 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
137 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
138 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
139 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
140 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
141 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
143 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
145 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
148 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
150 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
152 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
155 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
157 or a hash slice, such as
159 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
160 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
162 =item %s did not return a true value
164 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
165 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
166 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
167 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
169 =item %s found where operator expected
171 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
172 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
173 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
174 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
176 =item %s had compilation errors
178 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
180 =item %s has too many errors
182 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
183 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
185 =item %s matches null string many times
187 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
188 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
190 =item %s never introduced
192 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
193 before it could possibly have been used.
195 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
197 (W) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific handler.
198 That name might have a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it
199 doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute name, instead.
204 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
206 =item %s: Command not found
208 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
209 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
212 =item %s: Expression syntax
214 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
215 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
218 =item %s: Undefined variable
220 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
221 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
226 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
227 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
230 =item (in cleanup) %s
232 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
233 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
234 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
235 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
236 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
239 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
240 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
242 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
244 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
245 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
246 the previous line just because you saw this message.
248 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
250 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
251 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
253 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
255 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
256 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
258 =item C<-p> destination: %s
260 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
261 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
262 redirected it with select().)
264 =item 500 Server error
268 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
270 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
271 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
273 =item @ outside of string
275 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
276 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
278 =item <> should be quotes
280 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
283 =item accept() on closed fd
285 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
286 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
288 =item Allocation too large: %lx
290 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
292 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
294 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
295 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
296 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
297 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
298 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
299 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
301 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
303 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
305 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
307 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
308 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
309 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
311 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
313 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
314 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
315 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
318 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
319 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
320 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
321 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
323 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
324 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
325 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">
328 =item Args must match #! line
330 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
331 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
332 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
333 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
335 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
337 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
338 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
339 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
341 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
343 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
344 is now heavily deprecated.
346 =item assertion botched: %s
348 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
350 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
352 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
354 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
356 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
357 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
358 know which context to supply to the right side.
360 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
362 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
363 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
366 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
368 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
369 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
370 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
371 that can no longer be found in the table.
373 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
375 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
376 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
377 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
378 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
381 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
383 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
385 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
387 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
388 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
389 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
390 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
391 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
392 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
394 =item Attempt to join self
396 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
397 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
398 need to move the join() to some other thread.
400 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
402 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
403 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
404 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
405 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
406 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
409 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
411 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
412 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
413 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
415 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
417 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
418 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
419 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
420 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
422 =item Bad filehandle: %s
424 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
425 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
426 did it in another package.
428 =item Bad free() ignored
430 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
431 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
432 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
434 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
435 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
436 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
441 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
443 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
445 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
446 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
449 =item Bad name after %s::
451 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
452 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
461 $sym = "mypack::$var";
463 =item Bad realloc() ignored
465 (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had never been
466 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
467 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
469 =item Bad symbol for array
471 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
472 wasn't a symbol table entry.
474 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
476 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
477 wasn't a symbol table entry.
479 =item Bad symbol for hash
481 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
482 wasn't a symbol table entry.
484 =item Badly placed ()'s
486 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
487 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
490 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
492 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
493 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
494 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
496 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
498 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
499 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
500 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
502 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
504 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
505 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
507 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
509 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
510 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
511 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
512 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
513 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
515 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
517 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
518 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
519 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
521 =item bind() on closed fd
523 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
524 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
526 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
528 (W) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
530 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
532 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
534 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
536 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
537 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
538 so it was truncated to the string shown.
540 =item Callback called exit
542 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
543 exited by calling exit.
545 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
547 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
548 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
549 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
550 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
552 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
554 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
555 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
557 =item Can't "last" outside a block
559 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
560 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
561 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
562 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
563 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
564 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
566 =item Can't "next" outside a block
568 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
569 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
570 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
571 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
572 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
574 =item Can't read CRTL environ
576 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
577 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
578 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
579 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
581 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
583 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
584 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
585 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
586 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
587 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
589 =item Can't bless non-reference value
591 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
592 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
594 =item Can't break at that line
596 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
597 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
600 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
602 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
603 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
604 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
606 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
608 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
609 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
610 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
611 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
613 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
615 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
616 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
617 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
618 Something like this will reproduce the error:
621 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
622 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
624 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
626 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
627 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
628 Something like this will reproduce the error:
631 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
632 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
634 =item Can't chdir to %s
636 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
637 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
639 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
641 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
643 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
645 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
646 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
656 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
658 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
660 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
661 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
663 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
665 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
666 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
668 =item Can't coerce array into hash
670 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
671 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
672 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
674 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
676 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
677 or other plumbing problems.
679 =item Can't declare %s in my
681 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
682 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
684 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
686 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
688 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
690 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
691 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
694 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
696 (S) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
697 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
698 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
700 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
702 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
703 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
705 =item Can't do setegid!
707 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
710 =item Can't do seteuid!
712 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
714 =item Can't do setuid
716 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
717 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
718 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
719 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
720 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
721 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
723 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
725 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
726 without flags is emulated.
728 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
730 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
731 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
733 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
735 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
736 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
738 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
740 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
741 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
742 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
743 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
744 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
745 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
749 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
750 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
751 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
753 =item Can't execute %s
755 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
756 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
758 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
760 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
761 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
762 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
764 =item Can't find %s on PATH
766 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
769 =item Can't find label %s
771 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
772 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
774 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
776 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
777 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
778 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
780 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
782 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
783 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
784 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
788 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
790 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
792 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
793 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
794 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
795 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
796 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
797 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
798 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
799 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
800 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
801 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
802 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
803 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
804 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
805 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
807 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
809 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
810 can't retrieve its name for later use.
812 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
814 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
815 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
817 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
819 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
820 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
821 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
824 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
826 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
827 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
829 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
831 (W) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD signal
832 (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this signal
833 will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
834 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value.
835 This situation typically indicates that the parent program under
836 which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
838 =item Can't localize through a reference
840 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
841 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
842 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
843 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
845 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
847 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
848 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
849 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
852 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
854 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
855 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
856 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
857 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
859 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
861 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
862 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
863 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
864 doing C<make install>.
866 =item Can't locate %s
868 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
869 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
870 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
871 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
872 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
873 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
876 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
878 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
879 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
880 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
882 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
884 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
887 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
889 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
891 =item Can't modify %s in %s
893 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
894 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
896 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
898 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
899 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
901 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
903 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
906 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
908 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
911 =item Can't open %s: %s
913 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
914 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
915 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
916 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
919 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
921 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
922 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
923 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
924 and then read it in under a different file handle.
926 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
928 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
929 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
930 command line for writing.
932 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
934 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
935 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
937 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
939 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
940 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
943 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
945 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
946 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
948 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
950 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
952 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
954 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
955 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
956 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
957 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
959 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
961 (S) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup file. Perl
962 was unable to remove the original file to replace it with the modified
963 file. The file was left unmodified.
965 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
967 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
968 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
970 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
972 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
973 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
975 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
977 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
980 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
982 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
983 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
985 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
987 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such
988 as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
991 =item Can't stat script "%s"
993 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
994 it open already. Bizarre.
996 =item Can't swap uid and euid
998 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
1001 =item Can't take log of %g
1003 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1004 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1005 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
1006 the negative numbers.
1008 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1010 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1011 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1012 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1014 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1016 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1017 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1018 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1022 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1023 as the main Perl stack.
1025 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1027 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
1028 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
1029 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
1030 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1032 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1034 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
1035 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
1036 code calling sv_upgrade.
1038 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
1040 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1041 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1042 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1044 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1046 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1047 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
1048 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1049 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1052 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
1054 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
1055 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
1056 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
1058 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1060 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
1062 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1064 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1065 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1066 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1068 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
1070 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
1071 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
1072 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
1073 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
1074 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
1076 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
1078 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1079 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1081 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1083 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1084 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1086 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1088 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1089 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1091 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1093 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1094 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1095 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1096 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1099 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1101 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1102 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1103 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1105 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1107 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1108 references can be weakened.
1110 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1112 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1113 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1114 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1116 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1118 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1119 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1121 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1123 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1124 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1125 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1127 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1129 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1132 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1134 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1135 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1136 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .]
1137 are not currently implemented; they are simply placeholders for
1140 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1142 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1143 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1144 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1145 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1146 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1148 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1150 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1151 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1152 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1153 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1154 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1156 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1158 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1160 chmod 777, $filename
1162 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1163 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1165 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1167 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1169 =item Compilation failed in require
1171 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1172 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1173 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1175 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1177 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1178 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1179 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1180 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1181 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1182 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1183 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1184 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1185 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1187 =item connect() on closed fd
1189 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1190 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1192 =item Constant is not %s reference
1194 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1195 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1196 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1197 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1198 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1200 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1202 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1203 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1206 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1208 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1209 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1212 =item constant(%s): %%^H is not localized
1214 (F) When setting compile-time-lexicalized hash %^H one should set the
1215 corresponding bit of $^H as well.
1217 =item constant(%s): %s
1219 (F) Compile-time-substitutions (such as overloaded constants and
1220 character names) were not correctly set up.
1222 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1224 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1226 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1228 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1230 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1232 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1233 expression compiler gave it.
1235 =item corrupted regexp program
1237 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1238 a valid magic number.
1240 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1242 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1243 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1244 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1245 case it indicates something else.
1247 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1249 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1250 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1251 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1253 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1255 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1256 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1257 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1259 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1261 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1262 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1263 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1265 =item Did not produce a valid header
1269 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1271 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1273 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1275 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1276 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1280 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1281 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1283 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1285 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1286 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1287 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1288 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1289 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1290 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1291 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1292 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1295 =item Document contains no data
1299 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1301 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1303 =item do_study: out of memory
1305 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1307 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1309 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1312 =item elseif should be elsif
1314 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1315 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1316 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1317 unlikely to be what you want.
1319 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1321 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a STOP, INIT, or
1322 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1323 routines has been prematurely ended.
1325 =item entering effective %s failed
1327 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1328 effective uids or gids failed.
1330 =item Error converting file specification %s
1332 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1333 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1334 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1335 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1336 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1338 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1340 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1341 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1342 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1344 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1346 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1347 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1348 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1350 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1352 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1353 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1354 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1355 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1356 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1357 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1359 =item Excessively long <> operator
1361 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1362 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1363 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1364 variable and glob that.
1366 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1368 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1370 =item Exiting eval via %s
1372 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1373 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1375 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1377 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1378 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1379 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1381 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1383 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1384 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1386 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1388 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1389 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1391 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1393 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1394 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1395 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1396 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1398 =item false [] range "%s" in regexp
1400 (W) A character class range must start and end at a literal character, not
1401 another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-" in your false
1402 range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the "-", "\-".
1405 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1407 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1408 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1409 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1410 the Perl source code is distressed.
1412 =item fcntl is not implemented
1414 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1415 PDP-11 or something?
1417 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1419 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1420 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1421 the FileHandle package.
1423 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1425 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1426 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1427 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1428 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1431 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1433 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1434 intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1435 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1436 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1439 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1441 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1442 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1443 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1446 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1448 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1449 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1450 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1453 =item Format %s redefined
1455 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1459 eval "format NAME =...";
1462 =item Format not terminated
1464 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1465 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1467 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1477 (or something like that).
1479 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1481 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1483 =item gethostent not implemented
1485 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1486 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1489 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1491 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1492 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1494 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1496 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1497 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1499 =item Glob not terminated
1501 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1502 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1503 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1504 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1506 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1508 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1509 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1510 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1512 =item goto must have label
1514 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1515 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1517 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1519 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1520 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1521 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1523 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1525 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1526 is now heavily deprecated.
1528 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1530 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1531 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1532 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1534 =item Identifier too long
1536 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1537 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1538 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1539 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1541 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1543 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1544 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1545 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1547 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1549 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1550 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1551 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1554 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1556 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1557 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1558 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1560 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1561 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1562 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1563 properly converting the text file format.
1565 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1566 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1567 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1569 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1570 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1573 =item Illegal division by zero
1575 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1576 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1578 =item Illegal modulus zero
1580 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1581 don't take to this kindly.
1583 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1585 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1587 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1589 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1591 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1593 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1594 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1596 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1598 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1599 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1601 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1603 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1604 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1605 before the illegal character.
1607 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1609 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1610 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1612 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1614 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1615 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1617 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1619 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1620 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1621 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1622 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1623 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1624 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1625 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1627 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1629 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1630 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1631 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1632 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1633 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1634 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1635 for more information.
1637 =item Insecure directory in %s
1639 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1640 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1643 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1645 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1646 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1647 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1648 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1649 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1651 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1653 (W) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1654 as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for your
1655 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1656 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1657 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1658 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1659 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1660 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1663 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1665 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1666 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1667 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1668 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1669 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1670 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1671 and execute the specified command.
1673 =item internal disaster in regexp
1675 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1677 =item glob failed (%s)
1679 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1680 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1681 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1682 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1683 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1684 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1685 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1686 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1687 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1688 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1691 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1693 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1695 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1697 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1698 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1700 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1702 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not recognized
1703 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1705 =item invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
1707 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1708 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1710 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1712 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1713 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1715 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1717 (F) Something other than a comma or whitespace was seen between the
1718 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute
1719 had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated
1720 too soon. See L<attributes>.
1722 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1724 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1725 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1728 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1730 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1731 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1734 =item ioctl is not implemented
1736 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1737 strange for a machine that supports C.
1739 =item junk on end of regexp
1741 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1743 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1745 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1746 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1747 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1749 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1751 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1752 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1755 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1757 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1758 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1761 =item leaving effective %s failed
1763 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1764 effective uids or gids failed.
1766 =item listen() on closed fd
1768 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1769 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1771 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1773 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1774 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context.
1775 See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1777 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1779 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1780 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1782 =item Method %s not permitted
1786 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1788 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1789 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1790 ended earlier on the current line.
1792 =item Misplaced _ in number
1794 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1796 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1798 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1799 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1800 one line to the next.
1802 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1804 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1805 double-quotish context.
1807 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1809 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1810 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1812 =item Missing command in piped open
1814 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1815 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1817 =item Missing operator before %s?
1819 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1820 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1822 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1824 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1825 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1826 you were last editing.
1828 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1830 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1831 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1832 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1834 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1837 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1839 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1841 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1842 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1845 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1847 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1848 be created for some peculiar reason.
1850 =item Module name must be constant
1852 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1854 =item msg%s not implemented
1856 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1858 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1860 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1861 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1863 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1865 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
1866 have a name with which they can be found.
1868 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1870 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1871 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1872 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
1873 provided for this purpose.
1875 =item Negative length
1877 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1878 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1880 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1882 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1883 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1885 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1886 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1890 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1891 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1893 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1895 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1896 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1897 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1900 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1902 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1904 =item No comma allowed after %s
1906 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1907 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1908 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1910 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1911 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1912 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1913 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1914 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1915 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1916 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1917 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1918 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1919 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1920 this error was triggered?
1922 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1924 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1925 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1926 want to pipe the output from this command.
1928 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1930 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1931 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1932 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1933 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1934 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1937 =item No dbm on this machine
1939 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1940 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1942 =item No DBsub routine
1944 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1945 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1946 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1947 ordinary subroutine call.
1949 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1951 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1952 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1953 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1955 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1957 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1958 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1959 from which to read data for stdin.
1961 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1963 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1964 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1965 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1967 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1969 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1970 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1971 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1973 =item No Perl script found in input
1975 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1976 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1978 =item No setregid available
1980 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1983 =item No setreuid available
1985 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1988 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1990 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1993 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
1995 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1996 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1997 array indices for that to work.
1999 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2001 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
2002 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
2003 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
2004 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2006 =item No such pipe open
2008 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2009 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
2010 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2012 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2014 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
2015 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2017 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2019 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2020 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2021 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
2022 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
2025 =item Not a CODE reference
2027 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2028 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2029 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2030 See also L<perlref>.
2032 =item Not a format reference
2034 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2035 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2037 =item Not a GLOB reference
2039 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
2040 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2041 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
2042 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2044 =item Not a HASH reference
2046 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
2047 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2048 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2050 =item Not a perl script
2052 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2053 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2056 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2058 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
2059 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2060 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2062 =item Not a subroutine reference
2064 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2065 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2066 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2067 See also L<perlref>.
2069 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2071 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2072 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2074 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2076 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
2077 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2078 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2080 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2082 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2084 =item Not enough format arguments
2086 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
2089 =item Null filename used
2091 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
2092 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2094 =item Null picture in formline
2096 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2097 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2098 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2100 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2102 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
2106 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2108 =item NULL regexp argument
2110 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2112 =item NULL regexp parameter
2114 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2116 =item Number too long
2118 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2119 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2120 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2121 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2123 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2125 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
2126 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
2127 on portability concerns.
2129 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2131 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2133 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2134 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2136 =item Offset outside string
2138 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2139 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2140 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2141 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2145 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2149 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2151 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2153 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2154 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2155 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2156 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2157 true. See L<overload>.
2159 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2161 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2162 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2163 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2164 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2165 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2167 =item Out of memory!
2169 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2170 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl
2171 has no option but to exit immediately.
2173 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2175 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2176 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2178 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2180 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2181 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2183 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2184 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2185 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2186 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2187 error is trappable I<once>.
2189 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2191 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2192 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2193 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2194 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2196 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2198 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2199 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2200 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2204 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2207 =item panic: ck_grep
2209 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2211 =item panic: ck_split
2213 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2215 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2217 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2218 are in the savestack.
2220 =item panic: del_backref
2222 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2227 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2228 it wasn't an eval context.
2230 =item panic: do_match
2232 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2234 =item panic: do_split
2236 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2238 =item panic: do_subst
2240 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2242 =item panic: do_trans
2244 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2248 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2252 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2253 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2255 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2257 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2259 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2261 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2263 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2265 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2269 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2270 it wasn't a block context.
2272 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2274 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2276 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2278 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2279 invalid enum on the top of it.
2283 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2285 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2287 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2288 references to an object.
2290 =item panic: mapstart
2292 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2294 =item panic: null array
2296 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2298 =item panic: pad_alloc
2300 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2301 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2303 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2305 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2306 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2308 =item panic: pad_free po
2310 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2312 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2314 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2315 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2317 =item panic: pad_sv po
2319 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2321 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2323 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2324 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2326 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2328 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2330 =item panic: pp_iter
2332 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2334 =item panic: realloc
2336 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2338 =item panic: restartop
2340 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2341 didn't supply the destination.
2345 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2346 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2348 =item panic: scan_num
2350 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2352 =item panic: sv_insert
2354 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2357 =item panic: top_env
2359 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2363 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2367 (P) An internal error.
2369 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2371 (W) You said something like
2377 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2379 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2381 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2383 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2384 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2385 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2387 =item Permission denied
2389 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2391 =item pid %x not a child
2393 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2394 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2395 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2397 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2399 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2400 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2402 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2404 (W) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2405 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2407 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2409 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2410 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2411 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2412 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2414 You probably wrote something like this:
2421 when you should have written this:
2428 If you really want comments, build your list the
2429 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2433 'b', # another comment
2436 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2438 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2439 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2440 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2443 You probably wrote something like this:
2447 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2448 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2452 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2454 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2455 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2456 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2457 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2459 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2461 (S) The old irregular construct
2465 is now misinterpreted as
2469 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2470 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2471 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2474 =item Premature end of script headers
2478 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2480 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2481 Check your logic flow.
2483 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2485 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2486 Check your logic flow.
2488 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2490 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2491 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2492 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2496 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2498 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2499 or defined with a different function prototype.
2501 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2503 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2504 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2505 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2506 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2508 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2510 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2511 Check your logic flow.
2513 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2515 (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had already
2518 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2520 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2522 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2524 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2525 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2526 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2528 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2530 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2531 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2533 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2535 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2536 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2538 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2540 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2541 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2542 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2543 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2545 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2546 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2547 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2548 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2550 =item Reference is already weak
2552 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2553 Doing so has no effect.
2555 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2557 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2558 reference count of other than 1.
2560 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2562 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2563 could match an empty string.
2565 =item regexp memory corruption
2567 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2568 expression compiler gave it.
2570 =item regexp out of space
2572 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2574 =item Reversed %s= operator
2576 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2577 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2579 =item Runaway format
2581 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2582 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2583 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2584 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2585 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2587 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2589 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2590 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2591 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2592 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2593 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2594 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2596 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2597 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2598 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2601 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2603 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2604 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2605 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2606 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2607 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2608 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2610 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2611 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2612 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2615 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2617 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2618 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2620 =item Search pattern not terminated
2622 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2623 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2624 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2626 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2628 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2629 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2631 =item select not implemented
2633 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2635 =item sem%s not implemented
2637 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2639 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2641 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2642 that had previously been marked as free.
2644 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2646 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2647 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2649 =item Send on closed socket
2651 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2652 Check your logic flow.
2654 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2656 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2659 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2661 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2662 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2664 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2666 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2667 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2669 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2671 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2676 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
2677 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error
2678 text varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen
2679 variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted",
2680 "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and
2681 "Did not produce a valid header".
2683 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2685 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2686 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2687 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2688 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2689 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2690 for more information:
2692 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2693 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2694 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2695 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2696 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2698 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2700 =item setegid() not implemented
2702 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2703 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2706 =item seteuid() not implemented
2708 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2709 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2712 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
2714 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no arguments,
2715 unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process group ID.
2717 =item setrgid() not implemented
2719 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2720 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2723 =item setruid() not implemented
2725 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2726 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2729 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2731 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2732 because the world might have written on it already.
2734 =item shm%s not implemented
2736 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2738 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2740 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2742 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2744 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2745 put it into the wrong package?
2747 =item sort is now a reserved word
2749 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2750 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2752 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2754 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2755 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2756 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2758 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2760 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2761 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2765 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2766 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2767 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2769 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2771 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2772 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2774 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2776 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2777 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2778 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2779 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2782 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2784 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2785 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2786 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2787 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2788 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2790 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2792 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2793 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2796 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2798 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2802 eval "sub name { ... }";
2805 =item Substitution loop
2807 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2808 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2809 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2810 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2812 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2814 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2815 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2816 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2818 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2820 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2821 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2822 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2824 =item substr outside of string
2826 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2827 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2828 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2829 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2830 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2832 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2834 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2835 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2837 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2839 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2840 real and effective uids or gids.
2844 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2846 A keyword is misspelled.
2847 A semicolon is missing.
2849 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2850 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2851 A closing quote is missing.
2853 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2854 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2855 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2856 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2857 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2858 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2859 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2860 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2861 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2863 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2865 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2866 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2869 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2871 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2872 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2873 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2874 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2876 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2878 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2879 Check your logic flow.
2881 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2883 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2884 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2886 =item tell() on unopened file
2888 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2889 never opened or has since been closed.
2891 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2893 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2894 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2896 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2898 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2899 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2908 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2909 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2911 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2913 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2914 to the probings of Configure.
2916 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2918 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2919 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2920 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2921 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2924 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2926 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2927 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2928 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2930 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
2932 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2934 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2935 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2936 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2937 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2938 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2939 %ENV which produced the warning.
2941 =item times not implemented
2943 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2944 you're not running on Unix.
2946 =item Too few args to syscall
2948 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2949 system call to call, silly dilly.
2951 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2953 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2954 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2955 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2956 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2959 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2960 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2961 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2962 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2964 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2965 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2967 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2969 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2970 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2971 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2977 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2978 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2981 =item Too many args to syscall
2983 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2985 =item Too many arguments for %s
2987 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2989 =item trailing \ in regexp
2991 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2994 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2996 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2997 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2998 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3000 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3002 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3005 =item truncate not implemented
3007 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3008 Configure knows about.
3010 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3012 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3013 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3014 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3015 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3017 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
3019 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
3020 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
3022 =item umask not implemented
3024 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
3025 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3027 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3029 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3031 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3033 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
3034 contexts were entered and left.
3036 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3038 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3039 values were temporarily localized.
3041 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3043 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
3044 were entered and left.
3046 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3048 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
3049 scalars were allocated and freed.
3051 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3053 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3054 another package? See L<perlform>.
3056 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3058 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
3059 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3061 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3063 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
3064 has since been undefined.
3066 =item Undefined subroutine called
3068 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3069 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3071 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3073 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
3074 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3076 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3078 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3079 another package? See L<perlform>.
3081 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3083 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
3084 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
3086 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3088 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3089 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3091 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3093 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
3095 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3097 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3098 of valid modes: C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>,
3099 C<+L<gt>>, C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3101 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3103 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3104 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3105 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3106 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3108 =item unmatched () in regexp
3110 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3111 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
3112 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3114 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3116 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
3117 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
3118 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
3119 place you were last editing.
3121 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3123 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3124 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
3127 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3129 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
3130 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
3131 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
3133 =item Unrecognized character %s
3135 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3136 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3137 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3139 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3141 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3144 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3146 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3147 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3149 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3151 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3152 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3153 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3155 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3157 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3158 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3159 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3161 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3163 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3165 =item Unsupported function fork
3167 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3169 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3170 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3171 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3173 =item Unsupported function %s
3175 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3176 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3178 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3180 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3181 least that's what Configure thought.
3183 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3185 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3186 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3187 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3188 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3190 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3192 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing an
3193 attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3194 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3195 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3197 =item Unterminated attribute list
3199 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start
3200 of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3201 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute
3202 too soon. See L<attributes>.
3204 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3206 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3207 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3209 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3211 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3212 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3213 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3214 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3216 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3218 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3219 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3221 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3223 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3224 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3226 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3228 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3229 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3230 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3232 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3234 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3235 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3236 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3237 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3239 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3240 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3241 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3242 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3243 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3245 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3246 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3247 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3248 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3250 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3251 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3252 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3254 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3256 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3257 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3258 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3259 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3260 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3261 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3263 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3265 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3266 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3269 =item Use of uninitialized value
3271 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3272 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3273 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3275 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3277 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3279 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3281 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3282 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3283 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3284 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3285 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3286 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3290 when you meant to say
3292 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3294 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3295 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3300 when you should have said
3304 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3305 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3306 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3307 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3308 L<perlref> for more on this.
3310 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3312 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3313 valid when C<untie> was called.
3315 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3317 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3318 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3319 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3320 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3321 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3323 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3325 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3326 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3327 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3330 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3332 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3333 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3334 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3335 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3336 on the front of your variable.
3338 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3340 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3341 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3342 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3343 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3345 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3347 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3348 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3349 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3350 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3351 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3352 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3355 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3356 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3357 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3358 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3360 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3362 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3363 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3365 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3366 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3367 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3368 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3369 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3370 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3372 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3373 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3374 will I<never> share the given variable.
3376 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3377 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3378 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3379 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3382 =item Variable syntax
3384 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3385 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3388 =item Version number must be a constant number
3390 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3391 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3394 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3396 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3398 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3399 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3402 are supported and installed on your system.
3403 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3405 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3406 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3407 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3408 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3409 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3410 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3411 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3412 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3413 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3415 =item Warning: something's wrong
3417 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3418 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3420 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3422 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3423 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3425 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3427 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3428 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3429 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3430 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3434 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3438 but in actual fact, you got
3442 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3444 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3446 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3447 Check your logic flow.
3449 =item X outside of string
3451 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3452 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3454 =item x outside of string
3456 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3457 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3459 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3461 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3463 =item Xsub called in sort
3465 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3467 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3469 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3470 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3471 Use a filename instead.
3473 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3475 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3476 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3477 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3478 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3480 =item You need to quote "%s"
3482 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3483 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3484 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3485 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3487 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3489 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3490 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3491 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3493 =item \1 better written as $1
3495 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3496 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3497 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3498 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3499 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3501 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3503 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3504 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3505 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3507 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3509 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3510 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3511 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3512 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3515 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3522 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3524 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3525 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3527 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3529 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3537 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3538 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3539 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3540 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3542 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3544 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3545 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3547 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3549 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3550 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3551 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3552 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"