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<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() or unpack() only after certain types.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($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 Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
168 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
169 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
170 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
171 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
172 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
173 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
175 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
177 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
178 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
180 =item assertion botched: %s
182 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
184 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
186 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
188 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
190 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
191 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
192 know which context to supply to the right side.
194 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
196 (W) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
197 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
198 Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
199 created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
200 thread. See L<threads>.
202 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
204 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
205 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
207 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
209 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
210 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
211 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
217 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
219 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
220 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
223 bless $self, "$proto";
225 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
227 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
228 which is not in its key set.
230 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
232 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
233 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
235 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
237 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
238 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
239 outside any of those arenas.
241 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
243 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
244 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
245 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
246 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
248 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
250 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
251 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
252 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
253 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
256 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
258 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
260 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
262 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
263 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
264 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
265 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
266 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
267 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
270 =item Attempt to join self
272 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
273 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
274 to move the join() to some other thread.
276 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
278 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
279 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
280 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
281 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
282 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
285 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
287 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
288 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
289 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
291 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
293 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
294 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
295 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
296 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
298 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
300 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
301 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
302 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
304 =item Bad filehandle: %s
306 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
307 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
308 open(), or did it in another package.
310 =item Bad free() ignored
312 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
313 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
314 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
316 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
317 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
318 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
322 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
324 =item Badly placed ()'s
326 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
327 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
330 =item Bad name after %s::
332 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
333 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
342 $sym = "mypack::$var";
344 =item Bad realloc() ignored
346 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
347 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
348 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
350 =item Bad symbol for array
352 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
353 wasn't a symbol table entry.
355 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
357 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
358 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
360 =item Bad symbol for hash
362 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
363 wasn't a symbol table entry.
365 =item Bareword found in conditional
367 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
368 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
369 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
373 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
376 use constant TYPO => 1;
377 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
379 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
381 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
383 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
384 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
385 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
387 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
389 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
390 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
391 you need to predeclare a package?
393 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
395 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
396 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
399 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
401 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
402 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
403 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
404 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
405 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
407 =item \1 better written as $1
409 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
410 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
411 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
412 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
413 there are more than 9 backreferences.
415 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
417 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
418 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
419 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
421 =item bind() on closed socket %s
423 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
424 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
426 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
428 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
429 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
431 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
433 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
435 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
437 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
440 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
442 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
443 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
444 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
446 =item Callback called exit
448 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
449 exited by calling exit.
451 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
453 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
454 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
455 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
456 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
457 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
458 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
459 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
460 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
462 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
464 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
465 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
466 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
467 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
469 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
471 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
472 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
474 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
476 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
477 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
478 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
480 =item Can't bless non-reference value
482 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
483 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
485 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
487 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
488 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
489 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
491 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
493 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
494 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
495 like this will reproduce the error:
498 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
499 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
501 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
503 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
504 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
505 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
506 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
508 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
510 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
511 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
512 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
513 Something like this will reproduce the error:
516 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
517 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
519 =item Can't chdir to %s
521 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
522 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
524 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
526 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
529 =item Can't coerce array into hash
531 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
532 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
533 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
535 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
537 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
538 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
548 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
550 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
552 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
553 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
555 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
557 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
558 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
560 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
562 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
563 quotas or other plumbing problems.
565 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
567 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
568 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
569 extended for other types of variables in future.
571 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
573 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
574 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
576 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
578 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
579 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
581 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
583 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
586 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
588 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
589 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
590 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
592 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
594 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
595 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
596 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
598 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
600 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
601 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
602 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
604 =item Can't do setegid!
606 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
609 =item Can't do seteuid!
611 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
613 =item Can't do setuid
615 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
616 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
617 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
618 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
619 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
620 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
622 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
624 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
625 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
627 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
629 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
630 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
633 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
635 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
636 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
637 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
638 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
639 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
640 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
645 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
646 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
647 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
649 =item Can't execute %s
651 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
652 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
654 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
656 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
657 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
659 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
661 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
662 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
663 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
664 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
666 =item Can't find label %s
668 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
669 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
671 =item Can't find %s on PATH
673 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
676 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
678 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
679 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
680 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
682 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
684 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
685 example C<\p{Lu}> is all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
686 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
687 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
688 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
691 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
693 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
694 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
695 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
697 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
699 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
700 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
701 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
705 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
708 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
710 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
711 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
712 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
713 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
714 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
715 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
716 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
717 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
718 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
719 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
720 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
721 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
722 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
723 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
724 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
726 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
728 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
729 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
731 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
733 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
734 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
736 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
738 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
739 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
741 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
743 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
744 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
745 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
746 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
748 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
750 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
751 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
752 probably don't want to.)
754 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
756 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
757 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
758 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
759 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
761 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
763 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
764 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
765 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
766 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
767 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
768 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
770 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
772 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
773 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
774 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
775 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
776 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
777 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
780 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
782 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
783 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
784 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
787 =item Can't localize through a reference
789 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
790 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
791 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
792 that $ref will still be a reference.
794 =item Can't locate %s
796 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
797 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
798 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
799 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
800 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
801 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
802 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
804 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
806 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
807 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
808 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
809 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
811 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
813 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
814 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
815 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
817 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
819 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
820 doesn't seem to exist.
822 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
824 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
825 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
827 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
829 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
832 =item Can't modify %s in %s
834 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
835 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
837 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
839 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
842 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
844 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
845 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
847 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
849 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
852 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
854 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
855 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
856 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
857 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
858 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
859 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
861 =item Can't open %s: %s
863 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
864 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
865 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
866 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
869 =item Can't open a reference
871 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
872 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
876 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
877 open is not supported.
879 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
881 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
882 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
883 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
884 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
886 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
888 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
889 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
890 the command line for writing.
892 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
894 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
895 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
896 command line for reading.
898 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
900 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
901 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
902 the command line for writing.
904 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
906 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
907 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
910 =item Can't open perl script%s
912 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
914 =item Can't provide tied hash usage; use keys(%hash) to test if empty
916 (F) When a hash is evaluated in scalar context, bucket usage is
917 returned if the hash is populated, and false is returned if the hash
918 is empty. Bucket usage is not currently available for tied hashes.
919 To test if a hash is empty or populated, use keys(%hash) in scalar
922 =item Can't read CRTL environ
924 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
925 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
926 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
927 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
930 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
932 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
933 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
934 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
935 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
937 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
939 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
940 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
941 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
942 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
943 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
944 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
946 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
948 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
949 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
950 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
952 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
954 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
955 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
957 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
959 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
960 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
962 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
964 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
965 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
966 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
968 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
970 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
973 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
975 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
976 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
979 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
981 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
982 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
984 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
986 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
987 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
988 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
989 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
992 =item Can't stat script "%s"
994 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
995 open already. Bizarre.
997 =item Can't swap uid and euid
999 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1002 =item Can't take log of %g
1004 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1005 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1006 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1009 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1011 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1012 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1013 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1015 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1017 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1018 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1019 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1023 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1024 as the main Perl stack.
1026 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1028 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1029 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1030 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1031 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1033 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1035 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1036 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1039 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1041 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1042 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1043 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1045 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1047 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1048 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1050 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1052 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1053 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1055 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1057 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1058 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1059 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1061 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1063 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1066 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1068 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1069 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1070 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1071 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1074 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1076 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1077 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1078 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1079 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1082 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1084 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1085 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1086 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1088 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1090 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1091 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1093 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1095 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1096 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1097 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1099 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1101 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1102 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1103 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1104 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1105 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1108 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1110 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1111 references can be weakened.
1113 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1115 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1116 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1117 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1119 =item Character in "C" format wrapped in pack
1125 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1126 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1127 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1131 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1134 =item Character in "c" format wrapped in pack
1140 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1141 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1142 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1144 pack("c", $x & 255);
1146 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1149 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1151 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1153 =item Code missing after '/'
1155 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1156 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1158 =item %s: Command not found
1160 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1161 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1163 =item Compilation failed in require
1165 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1166 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1167 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1169 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1171 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1172 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1173 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1174 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1175 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1176 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1177 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1178 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1179 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1181 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1183 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1184 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1185 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1186 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1187 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1188 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1189 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1192 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1194 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1195 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1196 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1197 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1198 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1199 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1200 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1203 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1205 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1206 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1207 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1209 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1211 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1212 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1213 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1214 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1217 =item Constant is not %s reference
1219 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1220 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1221 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1222 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1223 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1225 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1227 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1228 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1229 commentary and workarounds.
1231 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1233 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1234 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1237 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1239 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1240 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1242 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1244 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1246 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1248 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1249 expression compiler gave it.
1251 =item corrupted regexp program
1253 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1256 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1258 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1260 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1262 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1263 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1266 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1268 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1269 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1270 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1271 which case it indicates something else.
1273 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1275 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1276 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1277 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1279 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1281 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1282 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1283 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1285 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1287 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1288 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1290 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1292 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1293 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1294 that triggers this error.
1296 =item Did not produce a valid header
1300 =item %s did not return a true value
1302 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1303 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1304 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1305 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1307 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1309 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1312 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1314 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1315 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1318 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1320 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1321 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1326 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1327 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1329 =item Document contains no data
1333 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1335 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1336 define a C<$VERSION.>
1338 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1340 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1341 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1343 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1345 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1347 =item do_study: out of memory
1349 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1351 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1353 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1354 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1355 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1356 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1357 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1358 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1359 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1360 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1362 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1364 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1365 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1367 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1369 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1372 =item elseif should be elsif
1374 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1375 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1376 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1377 unlikely to be what you want.
1381 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1382 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1383 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1385 =item entering effective %s failed
1387 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1388 effective uids or gids failed.
1390 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1392 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1393 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1394 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1396 =item Error converting file specification %s
1398 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1399 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1400 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1401 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1402 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1404 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1406 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1407 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1408 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1410 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1412 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1413 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1414 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1415 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1416 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1417 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1419 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1421 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1422 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1423 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1425 =item Excessively long <> operator
1427 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1428 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1429 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1430 variable and glob that.
1432 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1434 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1436 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1438 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1440 =item Exiting eval via %s
1442 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1443 goto, or a loop control statement.
1445 =item Exiting format via %s
1447 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1448 goto, or a loop control statement.
1450 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1452 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1453 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1454 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1456 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1458 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1459 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1461 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1463 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1464 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1466 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1468 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1469 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1470 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1471 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1473 =item %s: Expression syntax
1475 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1476 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1478 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1480 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1481 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1482 routines has been prematurely ended.
1484 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1486 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1487 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1488 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1489 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1490 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1492 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1494 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1495 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1496 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1497 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1499 =item fcntl is not implemented
1501 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1502 PDP-11 or something?
1504 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1506 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1507 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1508 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1509 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1511 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1513 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1514 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1515 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1516 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1517 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1518 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1520 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1522 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1523 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occured because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1526 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1528 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1529 as STDIN. This occured because you closed STDIN previously.
1531 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1533 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1534 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1535 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1538 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1540 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1541 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1542 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1545 =item Format not terminated
1547 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1548 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1550 =item Format %s redefined
1552 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1555 no warnings 'redefine';
1556 eval "format NAME =...";
1559 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1569 (or something like that).
1571 =item %s found where operator expected
1573 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1574 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1575 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1576 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1578 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1580 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1582 =item gethostent not implemented
1584 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1585 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1588 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1590 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1591 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1593 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1595 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1596 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1598 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1600 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1601 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1602 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1604 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1606 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1607 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1608 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1611 =item glob failed (%s)
1613 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1614 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1615 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1616 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1617 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1618 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1619 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1620 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1621 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1622 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1623 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1625 =item Glob not terminated
1627 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1628 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1629 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1630 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1632 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1634 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1635 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1637 =item goto must have label
1639 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1640 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1642 =item ()-group starts with a count
1644 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1645 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1646 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1648 =item %s had compilation errors
1650 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1652 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1654 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1655 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1656 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1658 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1660 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1661 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1663 =item %s has too many errors
1665 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1666 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1668 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1670 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1671 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1672 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1674 =item Identifier too long
1676 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1677 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1678 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1679 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1681 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1683 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1685 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1687 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1688 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1691 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1693 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1694 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1695 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1696 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1697 to your Perl administrator.
1699 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1701 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1702 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1704 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1706 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1707 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1709 =item Illegal division by zero
1711 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1712 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1715 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1717 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1718 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1719 number stopped before the illegal character.
1721 =item Illegal modulus zero
1723 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1724 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1726 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1728 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1729 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1731 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1733 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1735 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1737 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1738 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1740 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1742 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1743 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1745 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1747 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1748 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1749 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1751 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1753 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1754 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1755 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1758 =item Impossible to activate assertion call
1760 (W assertions) You're calling an assertion function in a block that is
1761 not under the control of the C<assertions> pragma.
1763 =item (in cleanup) %s
1765 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1766 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1767 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1768 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1769 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1771 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1772 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1774 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1776 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1777 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1778 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1780 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1782 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1783 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1784 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1785 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1786 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1787 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1788 L<perlsec> for more information.
1790 =item Insecure directory in %s
1792 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1793 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1794 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1796 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1798 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1799 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1800 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
1801 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
1802 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1804 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1806 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1807 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1808 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1809 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1810 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1811 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1812 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1813 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1816 =item Integer overflow in version
1818 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
1819 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
1820 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
1821 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
1822 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
1825 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1827 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1828 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1831 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1833 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1834 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1835 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1836 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1837 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1838 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1840 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1842 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1843 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1846 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1848 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1849 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1850 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1851 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1853 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1855 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1856 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1858 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1860 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1861 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1863 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1865 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1866 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1868 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1870 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1871 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1872 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1873 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1874 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1876 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
1878 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1879 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1881 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1883 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1884 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1885 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1888 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
1890 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
1891 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
1892 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
1893 list was terminated too soon.
1895 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
1897 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
1898 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1899 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
1902 =item Invalid version format (multiple underscores)
1904 (F) Versions may contain at most a single underscore, which signals
1905 that the version is a beta release. See L<version> for the allowed
1908 =item Invalid version format (underscores before decimal)
1910 (F) Versions may not contain decimals after the optional underscore.
1911 See L<version> for the allowed version formats.
1913 =item ioctl is not implemented
1915 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1916 strange for a machine that supports C.
1918 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1920 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1921 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1923 =item IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
1925 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
1926 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
1929 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1931 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1932 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1934 =item $* is no longer supported
1936 (D deprecated) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
1937 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. You should use the
1938 C<//m> and C<//s> regexp modifiers instead.
1940 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1942 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1943 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1946 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1948 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1951 =item junk on end of regexp
1953 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1955 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1957 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1958 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1961 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1963 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1964 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1967 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1969 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1970 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1973 =item leaving effective %s failed
1975 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1976 effective uids or gids failed.
1978 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
1980 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was alread used up when an unpack
1981 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
1982 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1984 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1986 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1987 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1990 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1992 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1993 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1994 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1996 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1998 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1999 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2000 instead on the filehandle.)
2002 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2004 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2005 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2006 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2008 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2010 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2011 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2013 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2015 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2016 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2018 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2020 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2027 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2028 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2029 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2030 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2032 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2034 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2035 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2036 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2037 when the function is called.
2039 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2041 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
2043 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
2044 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
2045 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
2047 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2049 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2050 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2052 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2054 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2055 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2056 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2059 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2061 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2062 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2065 =item % may not be used in pack
2067 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2068 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2069 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2071 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2073 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2074 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2076 =item Method %s not permitted
2080 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2082 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2083 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2084 ended earlier on the current line.
2086 =item Misplaced _ in number
2088 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2089 separate two digits.
2091 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
2093 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2094 double-quotish context.
2096 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2098 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2099 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2101 =item Missing command in piped open
2103 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2104 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2107 =item Missing control char name in \c
2109 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2112 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2114 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2115 they have a name with which they can be found.
2117 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2119 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2120 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2121 can vary from one line to the next.
2123 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2125 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2126 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2128 =item Missing right brace on %s
2130 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2132 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2134 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2135 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2138 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2140 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2141 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2142 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2144 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2146 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2147 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2148 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2150 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2153 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2155 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2156 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2159 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2160 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2163 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2165 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2166 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2169 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2171 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2172 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2174 =item Module name must be constant
2176 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2178 =item Module name required with -%c option
2180 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2181 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2182 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2184 =item More than one argument to open
2186 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2187 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2188 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2189 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2191 =item msg%s not implemented
2193 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2195 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2197 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2198 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2200 =item '/' must be followed by 'a*', 'A*' or 'Z*'
2202 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2203 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2204 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2206 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2208 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2209 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2210 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2212 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2214 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2217 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2219 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2220 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2221 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2223 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2225 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2226 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2227 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2228 provided for this purpose.
2230 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2231 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2232 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2233 will not trigger this warning.
2235 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2237 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2238 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2240 =item Negative length
2242 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2243 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2245 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2247 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2248 greater than or equal to zero.
2250 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2252 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2253 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2254 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2256 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2257 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2259 =item %s never introduced
2261 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2262 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2264 =item Newline in left-justified string for %s
2266 (W printf) There is a newline in a string to be left justified by
2267 C<printf> or C<sprintf>.
2269 The padding spaces will appear after the newline, which is probably not
2270 what you wanted. Usually you should remove the newline from the string
2271 and put formatting characters in the C<sprintf> format.
2273 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2275 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2276 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2277 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2278 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2280 =item No comma allowed after %s
2282 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2283 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2284 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2286 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2287 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2288 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2289 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2290 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2291 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2292 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2293 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2294 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2295 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2296 this error was triggered?
2298 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2300 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2301 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2302 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2304 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2306 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2307 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2308 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2309 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2310 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2312 =item No dbm on this machine
2314 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2315 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2317 =item No DBsub routine
2319 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2320 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2321 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2322 ordinary subroutine call.
2324 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2326 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2328 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2330 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2331 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2332 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2334 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2336 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2337 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2339 =item No input file after < on command line
2341 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2342 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2343 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2347 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2348 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2350 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2352 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2353 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2355 =item No output file after > on command line
2357 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2358 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2359 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2361 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2363 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2364 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2365 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2367 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2369 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2370 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2371 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2373 =item No Perl script found in input
2375 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2376 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2378 =item No setregid available
2380 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2383 =item No setreuid available
2385 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2388 =item No space allowed after -%c
2390 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2391 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2393 =item No %s specified for -%c
2395 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2396 you haven't specified one.
2398 =item No such class %s
2400 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2401 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2403 =item No such pipe open
2405 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2406 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2407 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2409 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2411 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2412 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2413 names on your system.
2415 =item Not a CODE reference
2417 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2418 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2419 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2422 =item Not a format reference
2424 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2425 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2427 =item Not a GLOB reference
2429 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2430 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2431 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2432 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2434 =item Not a HASH reference
2436 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2437 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2438 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2440 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2442 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2443 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2444 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2446 =item Not a perl script
2448 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2449 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2452 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2454 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2455 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2456 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2458 =item Not a subroutine reference
2460 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2461 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2462 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2465 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2467 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2468 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2470 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2472 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2474 =item Not enough format arguments
2476 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2477 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2481 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2482 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2485 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2487 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2488 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2489 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2490 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2491 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2493 =item Null filename used
2495 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2496 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2498 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2500 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2503 =item Null picture in formline
2505 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2506 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2507 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2511 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2513 =item NULL regexp argument
2515 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2517 =item NULL regexp parameter
2519 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2521 =item Number too long
2523 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2524 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2525 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2526 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2529 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2531 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2532 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2535 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2537 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2538 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2539 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2541 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2543 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2545 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2546 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2548 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2550 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2551 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2553 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2555 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2556 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2558 =item Offset outside string
2560 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2561 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2562 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2563 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2565 =item %s() on unopened %s
2567 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2568 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2569 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2571 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2573 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2574 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2578 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2582 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2584 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2586 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2587 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2588 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2589 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2591 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2593 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2594 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2595 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2596 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2599 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2601 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2602 in the current lexical scope.
2604 =item Out of memory!
2606 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2607 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2608 no option but to exit immediately.
2610 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
2611 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
2612 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
2613 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
2614 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
2616 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2618 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2619 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2620 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2621 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2623 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2625 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2626 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2629 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2630 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2631 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2632 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2633 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2634 where the failed request happened.
2636 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2638 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2639 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2640 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2642 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2644 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2645 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2648 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
2650 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2651 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2653 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2655 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2656 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2657 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2658 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2660 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
2662 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2663 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2667 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2668 page. See L<perlform>.
2672 (P) An internal error.
2674 =item panic: ck_grep
2676 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2678 =item panic: ck_split
2680 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2682 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2684 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2685 there are in the savestack.
2687 =item panic: del_backref
2689 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2692 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
2694 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
2695 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
2696 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
2697 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
2701 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2702 it wasn't an eval context.
2704 =item panic: do_subst
2706 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2709 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2711 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2716 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2720 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2721 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2723 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2725 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2727 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2729 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2731 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2733 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2737 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2738 it wasn't a block context.
2740 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2742 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2745 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2747 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2748 invalid enum on the top of it.
2750 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2752 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2753 references to an object.
2757 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2759 =item panic: mapstart
2761 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2763 =item panic: null array
2765 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2767 =item panic: pad_alloc
2769 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2770 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2772 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2774 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2775 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2777 =item panic: pad_free po
2779 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2781 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2783 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2784 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2786 =item panic: pad_sv po
2788 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2790 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2792 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2793 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2795 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2797 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2799 =item panic: pp_iter
2801 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2803 =item panic: pp_match%s
2805 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2808 =item panic: pp_split
2810 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2812 =item panic: realloc
2814 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2816 =item panic: restartop
2818 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2819 didn't supply the destination.
2823 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2824 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2826 =item panic: scan_num
2828 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2830 =item panic: sv_insert
2832 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2835 =item panic: top_env
2837 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2839 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2841 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2842 to even) byte length.
2846 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2848 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2850 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2856 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2858 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2860 =item C<-p> destination: %s
2862 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
2863 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
2864 redirected it with select().)
2866 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
2868 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2869 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
2870 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
2872 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2874 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2875 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2876 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2878 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2880 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2881 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2883 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
2885 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
2887 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2889 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2891 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2892 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2895 are supported and installed on your system.
2896 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2898 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2899 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2900 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2901 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2902 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2903 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2904 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2905 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2906 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2907 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2909 =item Permission denied
2911 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2913 =item pid %x not a child
2915 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2916 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2917 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2919 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
2921 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2923 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
2925 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
2926 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
2928 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2930 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2931 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2932 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2933 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2934 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2936 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2938 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2939 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2941 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2943 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2944 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2945 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2946 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2947 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2948 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2950 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2952 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2953 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2954 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2955 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2956 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2957 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2959 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2961 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2962 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2963 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2964 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2965 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2966 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2968 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2970 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2971 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2972 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2973 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2975 You probably wrote something like this:
2982 when you should have written this:
2989 If you really want comments, build your list the
2990 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2994 'b', # another comment
2997 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2999 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3000 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3001 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3004 You probably wrote something like this:
3008 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3009 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3013 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3015 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3016 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3017 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3018 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3020 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3022 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3023 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3025 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3027 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3028 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3029 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3030 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3032 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3034 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3035 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3036 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3037 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3039 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
3041 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
3042 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
3044 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
3046 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
3050 use attrs qw(locked);
3053 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
3059 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
3060 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
3062 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3064 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3068 is now misinterpreted as
3072 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3073 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3074 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3077 =item Premature end of script headers
3081 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3083 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3084 before now. Check your control flow.
3086 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3088 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3089 before now. Check your control flow.
3091 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3093 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3094 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3095 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3096 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3099 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3101 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3102 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3104 =item Prototype not terminated
3106 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3109 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3111 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3112 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3113 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3115 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3117 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3118 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3119 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3121 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3123 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3124 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3125 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3126 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3127 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3129 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3132 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3134 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3135 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3136 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3137 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3139 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3141 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3142 before now. Check your control flow.
3144 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3146 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3148 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3150 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3152 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3154 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3156 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3158 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3161 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3163 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3164 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3165 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3167 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3169 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3170 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3172 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3174 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3175 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3178 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3180 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3181 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3182 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3183 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3185 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3186 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3187 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3188 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3190 =item Reference is already weak
3192 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3193 Doing so has no effect.
3195 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3197 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3198 a reference count of other than 1.
3200 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3202 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3203 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3204 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3205 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3207 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3210 =item regexp memory corruption
3212 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3213 expression compiler gave it.
3215 =item Regexp out of space
3217 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3220 =item Reversed %s= operator
3222 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3223 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3225 =item Runaway format
3227 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3228 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3229 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3230 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3231 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3233 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3235 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3236 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3237 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3238 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3240 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3242 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3243 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3244 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3245 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3246 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3247 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3248 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3250 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3251 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3252 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3255 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3257 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3258 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3259 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3260 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3261 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3262 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3263 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3265 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3266 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3267 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3270 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3272 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3273 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3275 =item Search pattern not terminated
3277 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3278 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3279 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3281 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
3282 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
3283 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
3284 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
3286 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3288 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3289 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3291 =item select not implemented
3293 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3295 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3297 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3298 the current implementation.
3300 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3302 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3303 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3305 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3307 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3308 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3310 =item sem%s not implemented
3312 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3314 =item send() on closed socket %s
3316 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3317 before now. Check your control flow.
3319 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3321 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3322 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3325 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3327 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3328 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3329 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3331 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3333 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3334 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3335 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3337 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3339 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3340 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3341 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3344 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3346 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3347 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3348 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3351 =item 500 Server error
3357 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3358 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3359 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3360 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3361 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3362 produce a valid header".
3364 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3366 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3367 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3368 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3369 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3370 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3371 Please see the following for more information:
3373 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3374 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3375 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3377 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3379 =item setegid() not implemented
3381 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3382 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3385 =item seteuid() not implemented
3387 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3388 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3391 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3393 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3394 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3397 =item setrgid() not implemented
3399 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3400 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3403 =item setruid() not implemented
3405 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3406 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3409 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3411 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3412 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3413 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3415 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3417 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3418 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3420 =item shm%s not implemented
3422 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3424 =item <> should be quotes
3426 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3429 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3431 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3432 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3433 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3434 probably not what you had in mind.
3436 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3438 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3441 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3443 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3444 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3446 =item sort is now a reserved word
3448 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3449 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3451 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3453 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3454 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3455 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3457 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3459 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3460 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3462 =item splice() offset past end of array
3464 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3465 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3466 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3467 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3472 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3473 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3474 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3476 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3478 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3479 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3480 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3481 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3484 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3486 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3487 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3489 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3491 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3492 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3493 C<can> may break this.
3495 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3497 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3500 no warnings 'redefine';
3501 eval "sub name { ... }";
3504 =item Substitution loop
3506 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3507 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3508 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3509 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3511 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3513 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3514 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3515 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3517 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3519 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3520 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3521 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3523 =item substr outside of string
3525 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3526 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3527 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3528 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3529 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3531 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3533 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3534 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3536 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3538 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3539 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3540 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3541 clustering parentheses:
3543 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3545 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3546 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3548 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3550 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3551 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3552 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3554 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3556 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3557 and effective uids or gids.
3561 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3565 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3567 A keyword is misspelled.
3568 A semicolon is missing.
3570 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3571 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3572 A closing quote is missing.
3574 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3575 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3576 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3577 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3578 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3579 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3580 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3581 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3582 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3585 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3587 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3588 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3591 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3593 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3594 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3595 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3597 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
3599 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3601 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
3603 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3605 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3607 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3608 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3609 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3610 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3612 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3614 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3615 before now. Check your control flow.
3617 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
3619 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
3620 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
3622 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3624 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3625 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3627 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3629 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3630 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3632 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3634 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3635 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3644 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3645 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3647 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3649 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3650 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3651 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3652 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3655 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3657 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3658 to the probings of Configure.
3660 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3662 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3663 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3664 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3667 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3669 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3671 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3672 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3673 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3674 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3675 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3676 target of the change to
3677 %ENV which produced the warning.
3679 =item thread failed to start: %s
3681 (F) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
3683 =item Tied variable freed while still in use
3685 (F) An access method for a tied variable (e.g. FETCH) did something to
3686 free the variable. Since continuing the current operation is likely
3687 to result in a coredump, Perl is bailing out instead.
3689 =item times not implemented
3691 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3692 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3694 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
3696 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
3697 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
3698 specified an illegal mapping.
3699 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
3701 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
3703 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
3705 =item Too few args to syscall
3707 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3708 system call to call, silly dilly.
3710 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3712 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3713 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3714 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3716 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3718 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3719 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3720 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3721 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3724 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3725 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3726 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3727 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3729 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3730 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3732 =item Too late to run %s block
3734 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3735 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3736 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3737 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3740 =item Too many args to syscall
3742 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3744 =item Too many arguments for %s
3746 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3750 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3751 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3755 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3756 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3758 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3760 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3761 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3763 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3765 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3766 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3767 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3769 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3771 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3774 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
3776 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
3777 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
3779 =item truncate not implemented
3781 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3782 Configure knows about.
3784 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3786 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3787 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3788 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3789 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3791 =item umask not implemented
3793 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3794 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3796 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3798 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3800 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3802 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3803 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3805 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3807 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3808 many values were temporarily localized.
3810 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3812 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3813 many blocks were entered and left.
3815 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3817 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3818 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3820 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3822 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3823 another package? See L<perlform>.
3825 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3827 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3828 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3830 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3832 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3833 since been undefined.
3835 =item Undefined subroutine called
3837 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3838 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3840 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3842 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3843 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3845 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3847 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3848 another package? See L<perlform>.
3850 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3852 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3853 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3856 =item %s: Undefined variable
3858 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3859 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3861 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3863 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3864 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3866 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3868 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3869 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3870 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3872 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3874 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3877 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3879 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3880 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3881 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
3883 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
3885 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
3886 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
3887 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
3888 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
3889 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
3890 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
3892 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3894 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3895 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3896 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3897 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3899 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3901 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3903 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3905 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3906 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3907 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3908 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3909 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3912 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3913 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3915 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
3917 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
3918 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
3920 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
3922 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
3923 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
3925 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3927 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
3928 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
3930 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
3931 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
3934 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3936 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3937 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3938 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3939 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3941 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3943 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3944 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3945 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3946 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3948 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3950 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3951 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3952 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3953 you were last editing.
3955 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3957 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3958 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3959 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3962 =item Unrecognized character %s
3964 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3965 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3966 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3968 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3970 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3971 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3972 understood literally.
3974 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3976 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3979 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3981 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3982 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3983 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
3984 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3985 escape was discovered.
3987 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3989 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3990 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3993 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3995 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3996 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3997 bad switch on your behalf.)
3999 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4001 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4002 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4003 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4005 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4007 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4009 =item Unsupported function %s
4011 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4012 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4014 =item Unsupported function fork
4016 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4018 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4019 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4020 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4022 =item Unsupported script encoding
4024 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4025 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
4027 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4029 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4030 least that's what Configure thought.
4032 =item Unterminated attribute list
4034 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4035 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4036 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4037 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4039 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4041 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4042 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4043 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4044 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4046 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4048 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4049 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4050 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4052 =item Unterminated <> operator
4054 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4055 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4056 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4057 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4059 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4061 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4062 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4064 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4066 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4067 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4069 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4071 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4072 See L<Win32> for more information.
4074 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4076 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4077 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4079 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4083 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4085 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4086 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4088 =item Useless localization of %s
4090 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4091 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4092 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4094 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4096 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4097 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4099 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4103 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4105 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4106 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4108 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4110 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4111 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4112 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4113 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4114 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4115 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4120 when you meant to say
4122 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4124 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4125 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4130 when you should have said
4134 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
4135 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
4136 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
4137 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
4138 L<perlref> for more on this.
4140 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
4141 since they are often used in statements like
4143 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
4145 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
4148 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
4150 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
4152 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
4154 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
4158 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
4160 =item Useless use of %s with no values
4162 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
4163 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
4164 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
4165 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
4166 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
4167 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
4169 =item "use" not allowed in expression
4171 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
4172 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
4174 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4176 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
4177 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4179 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4181 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4182 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4183 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4186 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4187 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4189 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4191 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4192 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4194 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4196 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4197 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4198 used. (This may change in the future.)
4200 =item Use of freed value in iteration
4202 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
4203 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
4206 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
4208 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
4209 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
4210 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
4211 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
4213 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4215 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4216 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4218 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4220 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4221 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4222 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4224 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4226 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4227 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4228 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4230 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4232 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4233 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4234 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4235 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4238 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4239 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4240 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4241 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4244 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4245 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4246 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4247 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4250 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4251 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4252 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4254 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4256 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4257 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4259 =item Use of $# is deprecated
4261 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
4262 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4264 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4266 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4267 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4268 old way has bad side effects.
4270 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4272 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4273 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4274 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4276 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4278 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4279 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4280 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4283 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4285 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4286 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4287 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4289 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4290 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4291 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4292 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4294 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4296 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4297 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4298 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4299 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4300 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4301 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4303 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4305 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4306 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4307 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4308 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4310 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4312 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4313 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4314 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4316 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4317 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4318 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4319 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4320 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4321 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4324 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4326 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4327 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4328 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4329 be removed in a future version.
4331 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4333 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4334 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4335 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4336 removed in a future version.
4338 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4340 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4341 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4342 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4343 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4344 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4345 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4346 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4348 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4350 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4351 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4352 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4353 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4354 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4355 C<defined> operator.
4357 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4359 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4360 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4361 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4364 =item Variable "%s" is not available
4366 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
4367 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
4368 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
4369 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
4370 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
4371 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
4373 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
4375 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
4376 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
4377 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
4378 now been created and is live:
4380 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
4382 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
4383 gone out of scope, for example,
4391 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
4392 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
4394 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4396 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4397 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4398 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4399 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4400 front of your variable.
4402 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4404 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4405 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4406 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4408 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4410 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4411 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4412 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4413 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4414 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4416 =item Variable syntax
4418 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4419 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4422 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4424 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4425 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
4427 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
4428 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4429 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4430 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4431 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4432 variable will no longer be shared.
4434 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4435 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4436 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
4437 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4439 =item Version number must be a constant number
4441 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4442 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4445 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4447 (W portable) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4448 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4449 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4450 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4451 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4452 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4455 =item Warning: something's wrong
4457 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4458 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4460 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4462 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4463 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4466 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4468 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4469 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4470 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4471 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4475 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4479 but in actual fact, you got
4483 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4485 =item Wide character in %s
4487 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4488 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
4489 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
4490 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
4491 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
4492 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
4493 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4495 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
4497 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
4498 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
4499 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
4500 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
4502 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4504 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4505 before now. Check your control flow.
4507 =item %s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
4509 When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
4510 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
4511 this encoding, for example
4513 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
4515 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
4517 =item 'X' outside of string
4519 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
4520 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4522 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
4524 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4525 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4527 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4529 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4532 =item Xsub called in sort
4534 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4537 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4539 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4540 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4541 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4544 =item You need to quote "%s"
4546 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4547 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4548 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4549 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4550 what you want, put an & in front.)
4552 =item Your random numbers are not that random
4554 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
4555 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
4556 Something Very Wrong.