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 (default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
141 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
143 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
149 or a hash or array slice, such as:
151 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
152 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
154 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
156 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
157 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
160 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
162 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
163 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
164 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
166 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
168 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
169 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
171 =item assertion botched: %s
173 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
175 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
177 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
179 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
181 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
182 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
183 know which context to supply to the right side.
185 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
187 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
188 greater than or equal to zero.
190 =item Attempt to access to key '%_' in fixed hash
192 (F) A hash has been marked as READONLY at the C level to turn it
193 into a "record" with a fixed set of keys. The failing code
194 has attempted to get or set the value of a key which does not
195 exist or to delete a key.
197 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
199 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
200 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
201 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
207 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
209 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
210 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
213 bless $self, "$proto";
215 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
217 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
218 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
219 outside any of those arenas.
221 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
223 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
224 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
225 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
226 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
228 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
230 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
231 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
232 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
233 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
236 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
238 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
240 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
242 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
243 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
244 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
245 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
246 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
247 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
250 =item Attempt to join self
252 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
253 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
254 to move the join() to some other thread.
256 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
258 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
259 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
260 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
261 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
262 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
265 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
267 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
268 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
269 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
271 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
273 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
274 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
275 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
276 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
278 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
280 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
281 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
282 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
284 =item Bad filehandle: %s
286 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
287 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
288 open(), or did it in another package.
290 =item Bad free() ignored
292 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
293 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
294 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
296 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
297 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
298 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
302 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
304 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
306 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
307 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
310 =item Badly placed ()'s
312 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
313 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
316 =item Bad name after %s::
318 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
319 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
328 $sym = "mypack::$var";
330 =item Bad realloc() ignored
332 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
333 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
334 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
336 =item Bad symbol for array
338 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
339 wasn't a symbol table entry.
341 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
343 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
344 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
346 =item Bad symbol for hash
348 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
349 wasn't a symbol table entry.
351 =item Bareword found in conditional
353 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
354 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
355 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
359 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
362 use constant TYPO => 1;
363 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
365 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
367 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
369 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
370 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
371 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
373 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
375 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
376 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
377 you need to predeclare a package?
379 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
381 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
382 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
385 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
387 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
388 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
389 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
390 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
391 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
393 =item \1 better written as $1
395 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
396 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
397 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
398 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
399 there are more than 9 backreferences.
401 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
403 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
404 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
405 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
407 =item bind() on closed socket %s
409 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
410 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
412 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
414 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
415 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
417 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
419 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
421 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
423 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
426 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
428 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
429 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
431 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
433 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
434 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
435 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
437 =item Callback called exit
439 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
440 exited by calling exit.
442 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
444 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
445 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
446 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
447 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
448 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
449 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
450 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
451 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
453 =item / cannot take a count
455 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
456 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
459 =item Can't bless non-reference value
461 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
462 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
464 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
466 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
467 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
468 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
470 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
472 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
473 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
474 like this will reproduce the error:
477 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
478 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
480 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
482 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
483 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
484 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
485 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
487 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
489 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
490 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
491 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
492 Something like this will reproduce the error:
495 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
496 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
498 =item Can't chdir to %s
500 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
501 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
503 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
505 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
508 =item Can't coerce array into hash
510 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
511 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
512 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
514 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
516 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
517 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
527 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
529 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
531 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
532 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
534 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
536 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
537 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
539 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
541 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
542 quotas or other plumbing problems.
544 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
546 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
547 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
548 extended for other types of variables in future.
550 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
552 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
553 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
555 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
557 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
558 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
560 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
562 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
565 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
567 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
568 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
569 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
571 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
573 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
574 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
575 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
577 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
579 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
580 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
581 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
583 =item Can't do setegid!
585 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
588 =item Can't do seteuid!
590 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
592 =item Can't do setuid
594 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
595 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
596 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
597 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
598 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
599 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
601 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
603 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
604 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
606 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
608 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
609 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
612 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
614 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
615 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
616 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
617 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
618 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
619 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
624 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
625 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
626 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
628 =item Can't execute %s
630 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
631 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
633 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
635 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
636 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
638 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
640 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
641 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
642 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
643 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
645 =item Can't find label %s
647 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
648 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
650 =item Can't find %s on PATH
652 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
655 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
657 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
658 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
659 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
661 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
663 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
664 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
665 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
667 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
669 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
670 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
671 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
673 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
675 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property for
676 example \p{Lu} is all uppercase letters. Escape the C<\p>, either
677 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
682 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
685 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
687 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
688 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
689 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
690 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
691 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
692 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
693 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
694 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
695 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
696 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
697 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
698 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
699 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
700 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
701 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
703 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
705 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
706 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
708 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
710 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
711 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
713 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
715 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
716 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
718 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
720 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
721 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
722 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
723 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
725 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
727 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
728 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
729 probably don't want to.)
731 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
733 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
734 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
735 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
736 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
738 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
740 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
741 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
742 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
743 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
744 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
745 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
747 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
749 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
750 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
751 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
752 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
753 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
754 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
757 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
759 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
760 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
761 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
764 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
766 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
767 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
768 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
769 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
771 =item Can't localize through a reference
773 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
774 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
775 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
776 that $ref will still be a reference.
778 =item Can't locate %s
780 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
781 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
782 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
783 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
784 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
785 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
786 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
788 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
790 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
791 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
792 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
793 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
795 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
797 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
798 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
799 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
801 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
803 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
804 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
805 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
807 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
809 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
810 doesn't seem to exist.
812 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
814 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
817 =item Can't modify %s in %s
819 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
820 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
822 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
824 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
827 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
829 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
830 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
832 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
834 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
837 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
839 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
840 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
841 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
842 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
843 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
844 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
846 =item Can't open %s: %s
848 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
849 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
850 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
851 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
854 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
856 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
857 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
858 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
859 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
861 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
863 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
864 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
865 the command line for writing.
867 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
869 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
870 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
871 command line for reading.
873 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
875 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
876 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
877 the command line for writing.
879 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
881 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
882 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
885 =item Can't open perl script%s: %s
887 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
889 =item Can't read CRTL environ
891 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
892 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
893 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
894 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
897 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
899 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
900 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
901 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
902 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
904 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
906 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
907 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
908 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
909 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
910 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
911 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
913 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
915 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
916 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
917 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
919 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
921 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
922 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
924 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
926 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
927 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
929 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
931 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
932 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
933 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
935 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
937 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
940 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
942 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
943 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
946 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
948 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
949 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
950 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
951 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
954 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
956 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
957 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
959 =item Can't stat script "%s"
961 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
962 open already. Bizarre.
964 =item Can't swap uid and euid
966 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
969 =item Can't take log of %g
971 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
972 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
973 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
976 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
978 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
979 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
980 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
982 =item Can't undef active subroutine
984 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
985 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
986 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
990 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
991 as the main Perl stack.
993 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
995 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
996 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
997 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
998 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1000 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1002 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1003 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1006 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1008 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1009 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1011 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1013 (P) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1014 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1015 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1017 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1019 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1020 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1022 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1024 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1025 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1026 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1028 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1030 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1033 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1035 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1036 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1037 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1038 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1041 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1043 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1044 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1045 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1046 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1049 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1051 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1052 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1053 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1055 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1057 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1058 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1060 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1062 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1063 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1064 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1066 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1068 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1069 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1070 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1071 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1072 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1075 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1077 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1078 references can be weakened.
1080 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1082 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1083 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1084 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1086 =item Character in "C" format wrapped
1092 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1093 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1094 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1098 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1101 =item Character in "c" format wrapped
1107 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1108 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1109 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1111 pack("c", $x & 255);
1113 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1116 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1118 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1120 =item %s: Command not found
1122 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1123 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1125 =item Compilation failed in require
1127 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1128 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1129 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1131 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1133 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1134 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1135 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1136 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1137 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1138 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1139 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1140 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1141 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1143 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1145 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1146 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1147 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1149 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1151 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1152 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1153 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1154 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1157 =item Constant is not %s reference
1159 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1160 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1161 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1162 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1163 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1165 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1167 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1168 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1169 commentary and workarounds.
1171 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1173 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1174 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1177 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1179 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1180 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1182 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1184 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1186 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1188 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1189 expression compiler gave it.
1191 =item corrupted regexp program
1193 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1196 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1198 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1200 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1202 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1203 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1204 redirected it with select().)
1206 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1208 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1209 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1211 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1213 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1214 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1215 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1216 which case it indicates something else.
1218 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1220 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1221 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1222 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1224 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1226 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1227 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1228 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1230 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1232 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1233 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1234 that triggers this error.
1236 =item Did not produce a valid header
1240 =item %s did not return a true value
1242 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1243 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1244 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1245 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1247 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1249 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1252 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1254 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1255 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1258 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1260 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1261 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1266 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1267 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1269 =item Document contains no data
1273 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1275 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1277 =item do_study: out of memory
1279 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1281 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1283 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1284 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1285 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1286 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1287 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1288 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1289 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1290 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1292 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1294 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1295 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1297 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1299 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1302 =item elseif should be elsif
1304 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1305 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1306 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1307 unlikely to be what you want.
1311 (F) Empty C<\p{}> or C<\P{}>.
1313 =item entering effective %s failed
1315 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1316 effective uids or gids failed.
1318 =item Error converting file specification %s
1320 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1321 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1322 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1323 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1324 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1326 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1328 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1329 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1330 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1332 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1334 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1335 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1336 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1337 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1338 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1339 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1341 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1343 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1344 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1345 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1347 =item Excessively long <> operator
1349 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1350 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1351 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1352 variable and glob that.
1354 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1356 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1358 =item Exiting eval via %s
1360 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1361 goto, or a loop control statement.
1363 =item Exiting format via %s
1365 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1366 goto, or a loop control statement.
1368 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1370 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1371 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1372 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1374 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1376 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1377 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1379 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1381 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1382 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1384 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1386 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1387 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1388 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1389 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1391 =item %s: Expression syntax
1393 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1394 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1396 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1398 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1399 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1400 routines has been prematurely ended.
1402 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1404 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1405 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1406 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1407 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1408 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1410 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1412 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1413 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1414 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1415 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1417 =item fcntl is not implemented
1419 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1420 PDP-11 or something?
1422 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1424 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1425 to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1426 or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1427 the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1429 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1431 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1432 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1433 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1434 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1436 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1438 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1439 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1440 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1443 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1445 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1446 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1447 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1450 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1452 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1453 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1454 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1457 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex;
1459 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1461 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
1462 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
1463 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1465 =item Format not terminated
1467 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1468 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1470 =item Format %s redefined
1472 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1476 eval "format NAME =...";
1479 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1489 (or something like that).
1491 =item %s found where operator expected
1493 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1494 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1495 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1496 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1498 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1500 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1502 =item gethostent not implemented
1504 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1505 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1508 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1510 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1511 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1513 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1515 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1516 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1518 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1520 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1521 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1522 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1524 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1526 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1527 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1528 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1531 =item glob failed (%s)
1533 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1534 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1535 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1536 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1537 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1538 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1539 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1540 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1541 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1542 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1543 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1545 =item Glob not terminated
1547 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1548 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1549 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1550 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1552 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1554 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1555 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1557 =item goto must have label
1559 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1560 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1562 =item %s had compilation errors
1564 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1566 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1568 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1569 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1570 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1572 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1574 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1575 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1577 =item %s has too many errors
1579 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1580 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1582 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1584 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1585 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1586 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1588 =item Identifier too long
1590 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1591 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1592 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1593 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1595 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1597 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1599 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1601 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1602 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1605 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1607 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1608 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1609 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1610 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1611 to your Perl administrator.
1613 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1615 (S) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1616 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1618 =item Illegal division by zero
1620 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1621 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1624 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1626 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1627 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1628 number stopped before the illegal character.
1630 =item Illegal modulus zero
1632 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1633 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1635 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1637 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1638 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1640 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1642 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1644 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1646 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1647 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1649 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1651 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1652 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1654 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1656 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1657 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1658 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1660 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1662 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1663 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1664 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1667 =item (in cleanup) %s
1669 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1670 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1671 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1672 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1673 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1675 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1676 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1678 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1680 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1681 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1682 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1683 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1684 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1685 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1686 L<perlsec> for more information.
1688 =item Insecure directory in %s
1690 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1691 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1692 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1694 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1696 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1697 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1698 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1699 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1700 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1702 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1704 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1705 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1706 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1707 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1708 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1709 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1710 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1711 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1714 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1716 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1717 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1720 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1722 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1723 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1724 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1725 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1726 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1727 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1729 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1731 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1732 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1735 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1737 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1738 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1739 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1740 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1742 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1744 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1745 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1747 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1749 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1750 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1752 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1754 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1755 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1757 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1759 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1760 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1761 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1762 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1763 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1765 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator
1767 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1768 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1770 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1772 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1773 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1774 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1777 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1779 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1780 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1783 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1785 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1787 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1790 =item ioctl is not implemented
1792 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1793 strange for a machine that supports C.
1795 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1797 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1798 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1800 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1802 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1803 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1805 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1807 (W) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant needs
1808 to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1811 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1813 (W) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is unaware of.
1815 =item junk on end of regexp
1817 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1819 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1821 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1822 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1825 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1827 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1828 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1831 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1833 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1834 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1837 =item leaving effective %s failed
1839 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1840 effective uids or gids failed.
1842 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1844 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1845 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1848 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1850 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1851 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1852 instead on the filehandle.)
1854 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1856 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1857 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1858 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1860 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex;
1862 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1864 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1865 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1866 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1868 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1870 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1877 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1878 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1879 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1880 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
1882 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
1884 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
1885 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
1886 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
1887 when the function is called.
1889 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
1891 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
1893 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
1895 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
1896 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
1898 =item %s matches null string many times in regex;
1900 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1902 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1903 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
1904 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1907 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
1909 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
1910 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
1913 =item % may only be used in unpack
1915 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1916 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1917 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1919 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1921 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1922 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1924 =item Method %s not permitted
1928 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1930 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1931 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1932 ended earlier on the current line.
1934 =item Misplaced _ in number
1936 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
1937 separate two digits.
1939 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1941 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1942 double-quotish context.
1944 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1946 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1947 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1949 =item Missing command in piped open
1951 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
1952 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
1955 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1957 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
1958 they have a name with which they can be found.
1960 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1962 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
1963 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
1964 can vary from one line to the next.
1966 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
1968 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1969 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1971 =item Missing right brace on %s
1973 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
1975 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1977 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
1978 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
1981 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
1983 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1984 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
1985 the previous line just because you saw this message.
1987 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1989 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1990 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1991 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1993 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1996 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1998 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
1999 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2002 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2003 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2006 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2008 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2009 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2012 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2014 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2015 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2017 =item Module name must be constant
2019 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2021 =item Module name required with -%c option
2023 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2024 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2025 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2027 =item msg%s not implemented
2029 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2031 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2033 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2034 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2036 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
2038 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2039 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2040 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2042 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
2044 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
2045 must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
2046 of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2048 =item / must follow a numeric type
2050 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
2051 follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2053 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2055 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2058 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2060 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2061 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2062 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2064 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2066 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2067 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2068 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2069 provided for this purpose.
2071 =item Negative length
2073 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2074 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2076 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2078 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2079 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2080 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2082 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2083 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2085 =item %s never introduced
2087 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2088 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2090 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2092 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2093 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2094 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2095 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2097 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2099 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2101 =item No comma allowed after %s
2103 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2104 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2105 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2107 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2108 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2109 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2110 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2111 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2112 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2113 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2114 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2115 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2116 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2117 this error was triggered?
2119 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2121 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2122 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2123 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2125 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2127 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2128 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2129 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2130 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2131 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2133 =item No dbm on this machine
2135 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2136 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2138 =item No DBsub routine
2140 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2141 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2142 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2143 ordinary subroutine call.
2145 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2147 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2148 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2149 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2151 =item No input file after < on command line
2153 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2154 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2155 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2159 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2160 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2162 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2164 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2165 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2167 =item No output file after > on command line
2169 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2170 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2171 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2173 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2175 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2176 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2177 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2179 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2181 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2182 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2183 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2185 =item No Perl script found in input
2187 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2188 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2190 =item No setregid available
2192 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2195 =item No setreuid available
2197 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2200 =item No space allowed after -%c
2202 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2203 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2205 =item No %s specified for -%c
2207 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2208 you haven't specified one.
2210 =item No such class %s
2212 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2213 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2215 =item No such pipe open
2217 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2218 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2219 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2221 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2223 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2224 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2225 array indices for that to work.
2227 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2229 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2230 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2231 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2232 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2234 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2236 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2237 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2238 names on your system.
2240 =item Not a CODE reference
2242 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2243 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2244 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2247 =item Not a format reference
2249 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2250 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2252 =item Not a GLOB reference
2254 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2255 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2256 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2257 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2259 =item Not a HASH reference
2261 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2262 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2263 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2265 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2267 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2268 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2269 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2271 =item Not a perl script
2273 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2274 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2277 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2279 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2280 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2281 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2283 =item Not a subroutine reference
2285 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2286 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2287 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2290 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2292 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2293 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2295 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2297 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2299 =item Not enough format arguments
2301 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2302 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2306 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2307 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2310 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2312 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2313 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2314 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2315 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2316 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2318 =item Null filename used
2320 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2321 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2323 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2325 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2328 =item Null picture in formline
2330 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2331 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2332 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2336 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2338 =item NULL regexp argument
2340 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2342 =item NULL regexp parameter
2344 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2346 =item Number too long
2348 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2349 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2350 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2351 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2354 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2356 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2357 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2360 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2362 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2363 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2364 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2366 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2368 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2370 (W) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of arguments.
2371 The arguments should come in pairs.
2373 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2375 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2376 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2378 =item Offset outside string
2380 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2381 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2382 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2383 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2385 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2387 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2388 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2390 =item %s() on unopened %s
2392 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2393 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2394 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2398 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2402 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2404 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2406 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2407 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2408 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2409 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2411 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2413 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2414 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2415 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2416 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2419 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2421 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2422 in the current lexical scope.
2424 =item Out of memory!
2426 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2427 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2428 no option but to exit immediately.
2430 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2432 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2433 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2434 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2435 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2437 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2439 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2440 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2443 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2444 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2445 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2446 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2447 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2448 where the failed request happened.
2450 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2452 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2453 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2454 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2456 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2458 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2459 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2462 =item @ outside of string
2464 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2465 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2467 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2469 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2470 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2471 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2472 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2474 =item Package '%s' not found (did you use the incorrect case?)
2476 (W misc) You included a package file via C<use>, but the package name
2477 did not match the file name. It's possible that you misspelled the
2482 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2483 page. See L<perlform>.
2487 (P) An internal error.
2489 =item panic: ck_grep
2491 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2493 =item panic: ck_split
2495 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2497 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2499 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2500 there are in the savestack.
2502 =item panic: del_backref
2504 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2509 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2510 it wasn't an eval context.
2512 =item panic: pp_match
2514 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2517 =item panic: do_subst
2519 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2522 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2524 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2529 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2533 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2534 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2536 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2538 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2540 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2542 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2544 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2546 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2550 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2551 it wasn't a block context.
2553 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2555 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2558 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2560 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2561 invalid enum on the top of it.
2563 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2565 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2566 references to an object.
2570 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2572 =item panic: mapstart
2574 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2576 =item panic: null array
2578 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2580 =item panic: pad_alloc
2582 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2583 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2585 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2587 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2588 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2590 =item panic: pad_free po
2592 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2594 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2596 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2597 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2599 =item panic: pad_sv po
2601 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2603 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2605 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2606 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2608 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2610 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2612 =item panic: pp_iter
2614 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2616 =item panic: pp_split
2618 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2620 =item panic: realloc
2622 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2624 =item panic: restartop
2626 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2627 didn't supply the destination.
2631 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2632 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2634 =item panic: scan_num
2636 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2638 =item panic: sv_insert
2640 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2643 =item panic: top_env
2645 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2649 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2651 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2653 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2654 to even) byte length.
2656 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2658 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2664 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2666 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2668 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2670 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2671 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2672 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2674 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2676 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2677 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2679 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2681 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2683 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2684 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2687 are supported and installed on your system.
2688 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2690 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2691 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2692 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2693 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2694 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2695 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2696 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2697 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2698 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2699 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2701 =item perlio: argument list not closed for layer "%s"
2703 (S) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you forgot
2704 the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
2705 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
2706 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
2707 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
2708 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2710 =item perlio: invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2712 (S) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2713 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2714 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2715 list was terminated too soon.
2717 =item perlio: unknown layer "%s"
2719 (S) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
2720 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
2721 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
2722 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
2723 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
2724 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2726 =item Permission denied
2728 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2730 =item pid %x not a child
2732 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2733 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2734 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2736 =item P must have an explicit size
2738 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2740 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex;
2742 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2744 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2745 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2746 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2747 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2748 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2749 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2751 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2753 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2755 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2756 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2757 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2758 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2759 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2760 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2762 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2764 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2766 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2767 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2768 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2769 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2770 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2771 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2773 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex;
2775 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2777 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2778 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2781 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2783 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2784 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2786 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2788 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2789 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2790 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2791 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2793 You probably wrote something like this:
2800 when you should have written this:
2807 If you really want comments, build your list the
2808 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2812 'b', # another comment
2815 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2817 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2818 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2819 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2822 You probably wrote something like this:
2826 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2827 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2831 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2833 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2834 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2835 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2836 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2838 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
2840 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
2841 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
2842 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
2843 to the array you apparently lost track of.
2845 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2847 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2848 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2850 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2852 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
2856 use attrs qw(locked);
2859 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2865 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2866 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2868 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2870 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2874 is now misinterpreted as
2878 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2879 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2880 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2883 =item Premature end of script headers
2887 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2889 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
2890 before now. Check your control flow.
2892 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2894 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
2895 before now. Check your control flow.
2897 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2899 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2900 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2901 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2902 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2905 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2907 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2908 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
2910 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex;
2912 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2914 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
2915 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
2916 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2918 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression;
2920 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2922 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2923 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
2924 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
2925 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
2926 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2928 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2931 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2933 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2934 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2935 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
2936 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2938 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
2940 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
2941 before now. Check your control flow.
2943 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2945 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2947 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2949 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
2952 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2954 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
2955 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2956 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2958 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2960 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2961 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2963 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
2965 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
2966 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
2969 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2971 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
2972 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
2973 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
2974 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2976 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2977 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2978 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2979 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2981 =item Reference is already weak
2983 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2984 Doing so has no effect.
2986 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2988 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
2989 a reference count of other than 1.
2991 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex;
2993 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2995 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
2996 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
2997 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
2998 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3000 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3003 =item regexp memory corruption
3005 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3006 expression compiler gave it.
3008 =item Regexp out of space
3010 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3013 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
3015 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3016 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3018 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
3020 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3021 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3023 =item Reversed %s= operator
3025 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3026 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3028 =item Runaway format
3030 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3031 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3032 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3033 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3034 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3036 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3038 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3039 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3040 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3041 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3042 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3043 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3044 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3046 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3047 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3048 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3051 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3053 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3054 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3055 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3056 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3057 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3058 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3059 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3061 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3062 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3063 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3066 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3068 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3069 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3070 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3071 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3073 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3075 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3076 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3078 =item Search pattern not terminated
3080 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3081 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3082 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3084 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3086 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3087 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3089 =item select not implemented
3091 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3093 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3095 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3096 the current implementation.
3098 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3100 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3101 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3103 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3105 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3106 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3108 =item sem%s not implemented
3110 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3112 =item send() on closed socket %s
3114 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3115 before now. Check your control flow.
3117 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3119 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3120 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3123 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex;
3125 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3127 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3128 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3129 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3132 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex;
3134 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3136 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3137 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3138 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3140 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex;
3142 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3144 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3145 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3146 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3148 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex;
3150 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3152 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3153 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3154 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3157 =item 500 Server error
3163 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3164 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3165 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3166 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3167 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3168 produce a valid header".
3170 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3172 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3173 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3174 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3175 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3176 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3177 Please see the following for more information:
3179 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3180 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3181 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3183 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3185 =item setegid() not implemented
3187 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3188 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3191 =item seteuid() not implemented
3193 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3194 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3197 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3199 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3200 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3203 =item setrgid() not implemented
3205 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3206 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3209 =item setruid() not implemented
3211 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3212 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3215 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3217 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3218 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3219 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3221 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3223 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3224 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3226 =item shm%s not implemented
3228 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3230 =item <> should be quotes
3232 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3235 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3237 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3238 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3239 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3240 probably not what you had in mind.
3242 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3244 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3247 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3249 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3250 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3252 =item sort is now a reserved word
3254 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3255 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3257 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3259 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3260 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3261 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3263 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3265 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3266 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3270 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3271 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3272 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3274 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3276 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3277 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3278 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3279 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3282 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3284 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3285 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3287 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3289 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3290 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3291 C<can> may break this.
3293 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3295 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3299 eval "sub name { ... }";
3302 =item Substitution loop
3304 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3305 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3306 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3307 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3309 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3311 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3312 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3313 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3315 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3317 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3318 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3319 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3321 =item substr outside of string
3323 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3324 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3325 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3326 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3327 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3329 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3331 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3332 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3334 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex;
3336 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3338 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3339 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3340 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3341 clustering parentheses:
3343 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3345 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3346 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3348 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex;
3350 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3352 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3353 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3354 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3356 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3358 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3359 and effective uids or gids.
3363 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3365 A keyword is misspelled.
3366 A semicolon is missing.
3368 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3369 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3370 A closing quote is missing.
3372 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3373 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3374 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3375 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3376 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3377 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3378 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3379 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3380 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3383 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3385 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3386 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3389 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3391 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3392 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3393 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3397 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3399 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3401 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3402 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3403 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3404 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3406 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3408 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3409 before now. Check your control flow.
3411 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3413 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3414 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3416 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3418 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3419 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3421 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3423 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3424 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3433 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3434 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3436 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3438 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3439 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3440 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3441 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3444 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3446 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3447 to the probings of Configure.
3449 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3451 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3452 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3453 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3456 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3458 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3460 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3461 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3462 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3463 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3464 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3465 target of the change to
3466 %ENV which produced the warning.
3468 =item times not implemented
3470 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3471 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3473 =item Too few args to syscall
3475 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3476 system call to call, silly dilly.
3478 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3480 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3481 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3482 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3483 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3486 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3487 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3488 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3489 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3491 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3492 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3494 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3496 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3497 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3498 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3500 =item Too late to run %s block
3502 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3503 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3504 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3505 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3508 =item Too many args to syscall
3510 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3512 =item Too many arguments for %s
3514 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3520 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3521 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3523 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3525 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3526 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3528 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3530 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3531 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3532 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3534 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3536 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3539 =item truncate not implemented
3541 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3542 Configure knows about.
3544 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3546 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3547 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3548 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3549 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3551 =item umask not implemented
3553 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3554 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3556 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3558 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3560 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3562 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3563 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3565 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3567 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3568 many values were temporarily localized.
3570 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3572 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3573 many blocks were entered and left.
3575 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3577 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3578 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3580 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3582 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3583 another package? See L<perlform>.
3585 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3587 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3588 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3590 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3592 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3593 since been undefined.
3595 =item Undefined subroutine called
3597 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3598 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3600 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3602 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3603 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3605 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3607 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3608 another package? See L<perlform>.
3610 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3612 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3613 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3616 =item %s: Undefined variable
3618 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3619 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3621 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3623 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3624 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3626 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3628 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3629 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3630 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3632 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3634 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3637 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3639 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3641 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex;
3643 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3645 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3646 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3647 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3648 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3649 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3652 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3653 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3655 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3657 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3658 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3659 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3661 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3663 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3664 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3665 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3666 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3668 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3670 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3671 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3672 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3673 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3675 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3677 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3678 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3679 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3680 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3682 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3684 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3685 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3686 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3687 you were last editing.
3689 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3691 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3692 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3693 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3696 =item Unrecognized character %s
3698 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3699 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3700 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3702 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3704 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3705 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3706 understood literally.
3708 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex;
3710 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3712 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3713 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3714 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
3715 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3716 escape was discovered.
3718 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3720 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3723 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3725 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3726 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3729 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3731 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3732 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3733 bad switch on your behalf.)
3735 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3737 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3738 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3739 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3741 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3743 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3745 =item Unsupported function %s
3747 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3748 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3750 =item Unsupported function fork
3752 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3754 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3755 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3756 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3758 =item Unsupported script encoding
3760 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
3761 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
3763 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3765 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3766 least that's what Configure thought.
3768 =item Unterminated attribute list
3770 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3771 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3772 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3773 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
3775 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3777 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3778 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3779 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3780 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3782 =item Unterminated compressed integer
3784 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3785 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3786 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3788 =item Unterminated <> operator
3790 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3791 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3792 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3793 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3795 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3797 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3798 still valid when C<untie> was called.
3800 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex;
3802 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3804 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
3805 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
3807 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
3811 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
3813 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3814 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3816 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex;
3818 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3820 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
3821 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
3823 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
3827 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
3829 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3830 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3832 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3834 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3835 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3836 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3837 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3838 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3839 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3844 when you meant to say
3846 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3848 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3849 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3854 when you should have said
3858 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3859 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3860 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3861 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3862 L<perlref> for more on this.
3864 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
3865 since they are often used in statements like
3867 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
3869 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
3872 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3874 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3876 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
3878 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
3882 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
3884 =item Useless use of %s with no values
3886 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
3887 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
3888 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
3889 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
3890 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
3891 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
3893 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3895 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3896 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3898 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3900 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3901 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3903 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
3905 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
3906 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
3908 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
3910 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
3911 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
3912 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
3915 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
3916 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
3918 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3920 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
3921 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
3922 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3924 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3926 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
3927 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
3928 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
3929 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
3932 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
3933 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
3934 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
3935 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
3938 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3939 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
3940 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
3941 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
3944 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
3945 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3946 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3948 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
3950 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
3951 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
3952 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
3955 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3957 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3958 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3960 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3962 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
3963 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
3964 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
3965 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3967 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3969 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
3970 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
3971 old way has bad side effects.
3973 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3975 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
3976 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3978 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
3980 (W) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
3981 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
3982 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
3984 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
3985 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
3986 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
3987 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
3989 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3991 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
3992 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
3993 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
3994 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
3995 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
3996 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3998 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4000 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4001 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4002 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4004 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4005 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4006 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4007 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4008 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4009 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4012 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4014 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4015 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4016 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4017 be removed in a future version.
4019 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4021 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4022 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4023 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4024 removed in a future version.
4026 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4028 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4029 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4030 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4031 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4032 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4033 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4034 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4036 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4038 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4039 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4040 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4041 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4042 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4043 C<defined> operator.
4045 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4047 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4048 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4049 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4052 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4054 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4055 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4056 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4057 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4058 front of your variable.
4060 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4062 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4063 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4064 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4065 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4066 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4068 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
4070 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
4071 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
4072 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
4073 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
4075 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
4077 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
4078 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
4079 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
4080 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
4081 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
4082 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
4084 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
4085 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
4086 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
4087 between interferes with this feature.
4089 =item Variable syntax
4091 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4092 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4095 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4097 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4098 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
4100 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
4101 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4102 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4103 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4104 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4105 variable will no longer be shared.
4107 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
4108 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
4109 will I<never> share the given variable.
4111 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4112 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4113 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
4114 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4116 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex;
4118 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4120 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4121 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4122 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4124 =item Version number must be a constant number
4126 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4127 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4130 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4132 (W) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4133 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4134 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4135 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4136 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4137 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4140 =item Warning: something's wrong
4142 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4143 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4145 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4147 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4148 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4151 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4153 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4154 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4155 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4156 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4160 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4164 but in actual fact, you got
4168 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4170 =item Wide character in %s
4172 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting one.
4174 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4176 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4177 before now. Check your control flow.
4179 =item X outside of string
4181 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
4182 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4184 =item x outside of string
4186 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4187 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4189 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4191 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4194 =item Xsub called in sort
4196 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4199 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
4201 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4202 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4203 Use a filename instead.
4205 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4207 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4208 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4209 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4212 =item You need to quote "%s"
4214 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4215 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4216 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4217 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4218 what you want, put an & in front.)