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 read CRTL environ
916 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
917 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
918 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
919 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
922 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
924 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
925 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
926 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
927 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
929 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
931 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
932 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
933 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
934 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
935 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
936 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
938 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
940 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
941 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
942 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
944 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
946 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
947 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
949 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
951 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
952 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
954 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
956 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
957 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
958 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
960 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
962 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
965 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
967 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
968 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
971 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
973 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
974 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
976 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
978 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
979 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
980 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
981 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
984 =item Can't stat script "%s"
986 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
987 open already. Bizarre.
989 =item Can't swap uid and euid
991 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
994 =item Can't take log of %g
996 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
997 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
998 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1001 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1003 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1004 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1005 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1007 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1009 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1010 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1011 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1015 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1016 as the main Perl stack.
1018 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1020 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1021 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1022 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1023 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1025 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1027 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1028 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1031 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1033 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1034 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1035 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1037 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1039 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1040 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1042 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1044 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1045 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1047 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1049 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1050 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1051 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1053 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1055 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1058 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1060 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1061 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1062 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1063 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1066 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1068 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1069 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1070 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1071 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1074 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1076 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1077 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1078 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1080 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1082 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1083 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1085 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1087 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1088 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1089 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1091 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1093 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1094 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1095 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1096 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1097 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1100 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1102 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1103 references can be weakened.
1105 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1107 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1108 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1109 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1111 =item Character in "C" format wrapped in pack
1117 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1118 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1119 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1123 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1126 =item Character in "c" format wrapped in pack
1132 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1133 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1134 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1136 pack("c", $x & 255);
1138 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1141 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1143 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1145 =item Code missing after '/'
1147 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1148 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1150 =item %s: Command not found
1152 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1153 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1155 =item Compilation failed in require
1157 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1158 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1159 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1161 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1163 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1164 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1165 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1166 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1167 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1168 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1169 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1170 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1171 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1173 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1175 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1176 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1177 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1178 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1179 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1180 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1181 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1184 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1186 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1187 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1188 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1189 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1190 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1191 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1192 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1195 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1197 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1198 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1199 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1201 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1203 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1204 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1205 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1206 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1209 =item Constant is not %s reference
1211 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1212 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1213 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1214 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1215 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1217 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1219 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1220 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1221 commentary and workarounds.
1223 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1225 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1226 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1229 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1231 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1232 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1234 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1236 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1238 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1240 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1241 expression compiler gave it.
1243 =item corrupted regexp program
1245 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1248 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1250 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1252 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1254 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1255 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1258 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1260 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1261 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1262 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1263 which case it indicates something else.
1265 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1267 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1268 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1269 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1271 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1273 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1274 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1275 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1277 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1279 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1280 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1282 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1284 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1285 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1286 that triggers this error.
1288 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1290 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1291 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1292 to create a dangling reference.
1294 =item Did not produce a valid header
1298 =item %s did not return a true value
1300 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1301 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1302 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1303 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1305 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1307 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1310 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1312 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1313 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1316 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1318 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1319 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1324 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1325 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1327 =item Document contains no data
1331 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1333 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1334 define a C<$VERSION.>
1336 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1338 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1339 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1341 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1343 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1345 =item do_study: out of memory
1347 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1349 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1351 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1352 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1353 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1354 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1355 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1356 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1357 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1358 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1360 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1362 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1363 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1365 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1367 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1370 =item elseif should be elsif
1372 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1373 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1374 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1375 unlikely to be what you want.
1379 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1380 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1381 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1383 =item entering effective %s failed
1385 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1386 effective uids or gids failed.
1388 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1390 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1391 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1392 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1394 =item Error converting file specification %s
1396 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1397 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1398 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1399 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1400 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1402 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1404 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1405 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1406 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1408 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1410 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1411 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1412 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1413 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1414 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1415 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1417 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1419 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1420 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1421 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1423 =item Excessively long <> operator
1425 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1426 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1427 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1428 variable and glob that.
1430 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1432 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1434 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1436 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1438 =item Exiting eval via %s
1440 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1441 goto, or a loop control statement.
1443 =item Exiting format via %s
1445 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1446 goto, or a loop control statement.
1448 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1450 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1451 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1452 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1454 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1456 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1457 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1459 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1461 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1462 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1464 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1466 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1467 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1468 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1469 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1471 =item %s: Expression syntax
1473 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1474 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1476 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1478 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1479 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1480 routines has been prematurely ended.
1482 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1484 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1485 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1486 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1487 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1488 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1490 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1492 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1493 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1494 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1495 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1497 =item fcntl is not implemented
1499 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1500 PDP-11 or something?
1502 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1504 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1505 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1506 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1507 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1509 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1511 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1512 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1513 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1514 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1515 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1516 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1518 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1520 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1521 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occured because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1524 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1526 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1527 as STDIN. This occured because you closed STDIN previously.
1529 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1531 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1532 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1533 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1536 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1538 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1539 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1540 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1543 =item Format not terminated
1545 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1546 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1548 =item Format %s redefined
1550 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1553 no warnings 'redefine';
1554 eval "format NAME =...";
1557 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1567 (or something like that).
1569 =item %s found where operator expected
1571 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1572 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1573 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1574 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1576 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1578 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1580 =item gethostent not implemented
1582 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1583 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1586 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1588 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1589 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1591 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1593 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1594 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1596 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1598 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1599 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1600 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1602 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1604 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1605 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1606 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1609 =item glob failed (%s)
1611 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1612 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1613 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1614 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1615 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1616 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1617 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1618 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1619 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1620 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1621 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1623 =item Glob not terminated
1625 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1626 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1627 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1628 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1630 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1632 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1633 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1635 =item goto must have label
1637 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1638 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1640 =item ()-group starts with a count
1642 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1643 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1644 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1646 =item %s had compilation errors
1648 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1650 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1652 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1653 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1654 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1656 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1658 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1659 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1661 =item %s has too many errors
1663 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1664 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1666 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1668 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1669 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1670 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1672 =item Identifier too long
1674 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1675 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1676 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1677 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1679 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1681 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1683 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1685 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1686 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1689 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1691 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1692 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1693 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1694 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1695 to your Perl administrator.
1697 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1699 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1700 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1702 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1704 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1705 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1707 =item Illegal division by zero
1709 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1710 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1713 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1715 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1716 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1717 number stopped before the illegal character.
1719 =item Illegal modulus zero
1721 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1722 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1724 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1726 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1727 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1729 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1731 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1733 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1735 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1736 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1738 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1740 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1741 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1743 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1745 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1746 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1747 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1749 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1751 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1752 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1753 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1756 =item Impossible to activate assertion call
1758 (W assertions) You're calling an assertion function in a block that is
1759 not under the control of the C<assertions> pragma.
1761 =item (in cleanup) %s
1763 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1764 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1765 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1766 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1767 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1769 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1770 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1772 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1774 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1775 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1776 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1778 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1780 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1781 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1782 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1783 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1784 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1785 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1786 L<perlsec> for more information.
1788 =item Insecure directory in %s
1790 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1791 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1792 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1794 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1796 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1797 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1798 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
1799 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
1800 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1802 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1804 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1805 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1806 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1807 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1808 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1809 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1810 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1811 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1814 =item Integer overflow in version
1816 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
1817 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
1818 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
1819 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
1820 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
1823 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1825 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1826 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1829 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1831 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1832 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1833 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1834 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1835 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1836 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1838 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1840 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1841 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1844 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1846 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1847 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1848 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1849 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1851 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1853 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1854 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1856 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1858 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1859 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1861 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1863 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1864 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1866 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1868 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1869 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1870 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1871 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1872 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1874 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
1876 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1877 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1879 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1881 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1882 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1883 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1886 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
1888 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
1889 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
1890 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
1891 list was terminated too soon.
1893 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
1895 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
1896 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1897 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
1900 =item Invalid version format (multiple underscores)
1902 (F) Versions may contain at most a single underscore, which signals
1903 that the version is a beta release. See L<version> for the allowed
1906 =item Invalid version format (underscores before decimal)
1908 (F) Versions may not contain decimals after the optional underscore.
1909 See L<version> for the allowed version formats.
1911 =item ioctl is not implemented
1913 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1914 strange for a machine that supports C.
1916 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1918 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1919 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1921 =item IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
1923 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
1924 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
1927 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1929 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1930 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1932 =item $* is no longer supported
1934 (D deprecated) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
1935 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. You should use the
1936 C<//m> and C<//s> regexp modifiers instead.
1938 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1940 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1941 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1944 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1946 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1949 =item junk on end of regexp
1951 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1953 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1955 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1956 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1959 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1961 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1962 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1965 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1967 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1968 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1971 =item leaving effective %s failed
1973 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1974 effective uids or gids failed.
1976 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
1978 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was alread used up when an unpack
1979 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
1980 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1982 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1984 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1985 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1988 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1990 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1991 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1992 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1994 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1996 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1997 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1998 instead on the filehandle.)
2000 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2002 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2003 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2004 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2006 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2008 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2009 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2011 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2013 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2014 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2016 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2018 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2025 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2026 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2027 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2028 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2030 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2032 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2033 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2034 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2035 when the function is called.
2037 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2039 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
2041 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
2042 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
2043 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
2045 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2047 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2048 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2050 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2052 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2053 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2054 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2057 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2059 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2060 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2063 =item % may not be used in pack
2065 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2066 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2067 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2069 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2071 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2072 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2074 =item Method %s not permitted
2078 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2080 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2081 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2082 ended earlier on the current line.
2084 =item Misplaced _ in number
2086 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2087 separate two digits.
2089 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
2091 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2092 double-quotish context.
2094 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2096 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2097 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2099 =item Missing command in piped open
2101 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2102 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2105 =item Missing control char name in \c
2107 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2110 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2112 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2113 they have a name with which they can be found.
2115 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2117 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2118 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2119 can vary from one line to the next.
2121 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2123 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2124 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2126 =item Missing right brace on %s
2128 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2130 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2132 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2133 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2136 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2138 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2139 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2140 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2142 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2144 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2145 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2146 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2148 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2151 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2153 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2154 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2157 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2158 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2161 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2163 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2164 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2167 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2169 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2170 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2172 =item Module name must be constant
2174 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2176 =item Module name required with -%c option
2178 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2179 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2180 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2182 =item More than one argument to open
2184 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2185 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2186 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2187 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2189 =item msg%s not implemented
2191 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2193 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2195 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2196 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2198 =item '/' must be followed by 'a*', 'A*' or 'Z*'
2200 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2201 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2202 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2204 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2206 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2207 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2208 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2210 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2212 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2215 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2217 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2218 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2219 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2221 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2223 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2224 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2225 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2226 provided for this purpose.
2228 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2229 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2230 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2231 will not trigger this warning.
2233 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2235 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2236 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2238 =item Negative length
2240 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2241 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2243 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2245 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2246 greater than or equal to zero.
2248 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2250 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2251 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2252 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2254 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2255 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2257 =item %s never introduced
2259 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2260 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2262 =item Newline in left-justified string for %s
2264 (W printf) There is a newline in a string to be left justified by
2265 C<printf> or C<sprintf>.
2267 The padding spaces will appear after the newline, which is probably not
2268 what you wanted. Usually you should remove the newline from the string
2269 and put formatting characters in the C<sprintf> format.
2271 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2273 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2274 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2275 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2276 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2278 =item No comma allowed after %s
2280 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2281 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2282 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2284 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2285 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2286 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2287 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2288 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2289 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2290 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2291 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2292 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2293 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2294 this error was triggered?
2296 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2298 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2299 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2300 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2302 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2304 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2305 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2306 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2307 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2308 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2310 =item No dbm on this machine
2312 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2313 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2315 =item No DBsub routine
2317 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2318 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2319 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2320 ordinary subroutine call.
2322 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2324 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2326 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2328 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2329 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2330 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2332 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2334 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2335 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2337 =item No input file after < on command line
2339 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2340 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2341 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2345 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2346 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2348 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2350 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2351 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2353 =item No output file after > on command line
2355 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2356 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2357 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2359 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2361 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2362 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2363 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2365 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2367 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2368 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2369 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2371 =item No Perl script found in input
2373 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2374 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2376 =item No setregid available
2378 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2381 =item No setreuid available
2383 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2386 =item No space allowed after -%c
2388 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2389 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2391 =item No %s specified for -%c
2393 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2394 you haven't specified one.
2396 =item No such class %s
2398 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2399 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2401 =item No such pipe open
2403 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2404 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2405 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2407 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2409 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2410 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2411 names on your system.
2413 =item Not a CODE reference
2415 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2416 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2417 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2420 =item Not a format reference
2422 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2423 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2425 =item Not a GLOB reference
2427 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2428 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2429 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2430 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2432 =item Not a HASH reference
2434 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2435 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2436 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2438 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2440 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2441 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2442 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2444 =item Not a perl script
2446 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2447 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2450 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2452 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2453 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2454 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2456 =item Not a subroutine reference
2458 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2459 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2460 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2463 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2465 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2466 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2468 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2470 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2472 =item Not enough format arguments
2474 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2475 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2479 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2480 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2483 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2485 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2486 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2487 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2488 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2489 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2491 =item Null filename used
2493 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2494 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2496 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2498 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2501 =item Null picture in formline
2503 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2504 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2505 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2509 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2511 =item NULL regexp argument
2513 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2515 =item NULL regexp parameter
2517 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2519 =item Number too long
2521 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2522 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2523 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2524 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2527 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2529 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2530 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2533 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2535 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2536 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2537 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2539 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2541 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2543 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2544 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2546 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2548 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2549 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2551 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2553 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2554 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2556 =item Offset outside string
2558 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2559 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2560 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2561 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2563 =item %s() on unopened %s
2565 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2566 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2567 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2569 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2571 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2572 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2576 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2580 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2582 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2584 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2585 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2586 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2587 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2589 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2591 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2592 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2593 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2594 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2597 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2599 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2600 in the current lexical scope.
2602 =item Out of memory!
2604 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2605 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2606 no option but to exit immediately.
2608 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
2609 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
2610 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
2611 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
2612 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
2614 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2616 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2617 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2618 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2619 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2621 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2623 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2624 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2627 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2628 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2629 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2630 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2631 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2632 where the failed request happened.
2634 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2636 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2637 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2638 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2640 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2642 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2643 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2646 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
2648 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2649 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2651 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2653 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2654 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2655 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2656 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2658 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
2660 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2661 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2665 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2666 page. See L<perlform>.
2670 (P) An internal error.
2672 =item panic: array extend
2674 (P) An attempt was made to extend an array beyond the largest possible
2677 =item panic: ck_grep
2679 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2681 =item panic: ck_split
2683 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2685 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2687 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2688 there are in the savestack.
2690 =item panic: del_backref
2692 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2695 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
2697 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
2698 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
2699 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
2700 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
2704 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2705 it wasn't an eval context.
2707 =item panic: do_subst
2709 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2712 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2714 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2719 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2723 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2724 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2726 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2728 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2730 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2732 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2734 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2736 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2740 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2741 it wasn't a block context.
2743 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2745 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2748 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2750 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2751 invalid enum on the top of it.
2753 =item panic: list extend
2755 (P) An attempt was made to extend a list beyond the largest possible
2758 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2760 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2761 references to an object.
2765 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2767 =item panic: mapstart
2769 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2771 =item panic: memory wrap
2773 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
2775 =item panic: null array
2777 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2779 =item panic: pad_alloc
2781 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2782 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2784 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2786 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2787 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2789 =item panic: pad_free po
2791 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2793 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2795 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2796 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2798 =item panic: pad_sv po
2800 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2802 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2804 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2805 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2807 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2809 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2811 =item panic: pp_iter
2813 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2815 =item panic: pp_match%s
2817 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2820 =item panic: pp_split
2822 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2824 =item panic: realloc
2826 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2828 =item panic: restartop
2830 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2831 didn't supply the destination.
2835 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2836 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2838 =item panic: scan_num
2840 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2842 =item panic: string extend
2844 (P) An attempt was made to extend a string beyond the largest possible
2847 =item panic: sv_insert
2849 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2852 =item panic: top_env
2854 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2856 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2858 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2859 to even) byte length.
2863 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2865 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2867 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2873 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2875 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2877 =item C<-p> destination: %s
2879 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
2880 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
2881 redirected it with select().)
2883 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
2885 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2886 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
2887 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
2889 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2891 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2892 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2893 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2895 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2897 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2898 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2900 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
2902 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
2904 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2906 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2908 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2909 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2912 are supported and installed on your system.
2913 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2915 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2916 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2917 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2918 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2919 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2920 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2921 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2922 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2923 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2924 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2926 =item Permission denied
2928 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2930 =item pid %x not a child
2932 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2933 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2934 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2936 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
2938 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2940 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
2942 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
2943 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
2945 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2947 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2948 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2949 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2950 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2951 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2953 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2955 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2956 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2958 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2960 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2961 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2962 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2963 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2964 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2965 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2967 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2969 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2970 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2971 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2972 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2973 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2974 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2976 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2978 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2979 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2980 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2981 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2982 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2983 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2985 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2987 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2988 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2989 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2990 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2992 You probably wrote something like this:
2999 when you should have written this:
3006 If you really want comments, build your list the
3007 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3011 'b', # another comment
3014 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3016 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3017 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3018 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3021 You probably wrote something like this:
3025 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3026 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3030 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3032 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3033 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3034 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3035 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3037 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3039 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3040 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3042 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3044 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3045 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3046 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3047 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3049 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3051 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3052 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3053 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3054 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3056 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
3058 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
3059 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
3061 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
3063 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
3067 use attrs qw(locked);
3070 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
3076 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
3077 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
3079 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3081 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3085 is now misinterpreted as
3089 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3090 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3091 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3094 =item Premature end of script headers
3098 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3100 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3101 before now. Check your control flow.
3103 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3105 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3106 before now. Check your control flow.
3108 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3110 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3111 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3112 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3113 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3116 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3118 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3119 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3121 =item Prototype not terminated
3123 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3126 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3128 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3129 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3130 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3132 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3134 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3135 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3136 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3138 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3140 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3141 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3142 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3143 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3144 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3146 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3149 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3151 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3152 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3153 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3154 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3156 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3158 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3159 before now. Check your control flow.
3161 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3163 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3165 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3167 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3169 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3171 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3173 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3175 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3178 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3180 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3181 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3182 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3184 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3186 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3187 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3189 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3191 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3192 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3195 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3197 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3198 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3199 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3200 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3202 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3203 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3204 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3205 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3207 =item Reference is already weak
3209 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3210 Doing so has no effect.
3212 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3214 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3215 a reference count of other than 1.
3217 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3219 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3220 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3221 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3222 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3224 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3227 =item regexp memory corruption
3229 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3230 expression compiler gave it.
3232 =item Regexp out of space
3234 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3237 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
3239 (F) Your format containes the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
3240 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
3241 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
3243 =item Reversed %s= operator
3245 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3246 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3248 =item Runaway format
3250 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3251 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3252 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3253 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3254 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3256 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3258 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3259 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3260 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3261 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3263 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3265 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3266 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3267 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3268 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3269 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3270 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3271 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3273 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3274 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3275 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3278 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3280 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3281 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3282 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3283 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3284 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3285 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3286 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3288 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3289 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3290 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3293 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3295 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3296 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3298 =item Search pattern not terminated
3300 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3301 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3302 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3304 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
3305 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
3306 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
3307 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
3309 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3311 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3312 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3314 =item select not implemented
3316 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3318 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3320 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3321 the current implementation.
3323 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3325 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3326 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3328 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3330 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3331 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3333 =item sem%s not implemented
3335 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3337 =item send() on closed socket %s
3339 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3340 before now. Check your control flow.
3342 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3344 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3345 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3348 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3350 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3351 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3352 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3354 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3356 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3357 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3358 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3360 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3362 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3363 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3364 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3367 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3369 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3370 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3371 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3374 =item 500 Server error
3380 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3381 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3382 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3383 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3384 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3385 produce a valid header".
3387 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3389 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3390 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3391 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3392 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3393 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3394 Please see the following for more information:
3396 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3397 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3398 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3400 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3402 =item setegid() not implemented
3404 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3405 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3408 =item seteuid() not implemented
3410 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3411 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3414 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3416 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3417 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3420 =item setrgid() not implemented
3422 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3423 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3426 =item setruid() not implemented
3428 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3429 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3432 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3434 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3435 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3436 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3438 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3440 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3441 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3443 =item shm%s not implemented
3445 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3447 =item !=~ should be !~
3449 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
3450 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
3451 operators: probably not what you intended.
3453 =item <> should be quotes
3455 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3458 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3460 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3461 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3462 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3463 probably not what you had in mind.
3465 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3467 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3470 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3472 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3473 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3475 =item sort is now a reserved word
3477 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3478 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3480 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3482 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3483 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3484 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3486 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3488 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3489 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3491 =item splice() offset past end of array
3493 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3494 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3495 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3496 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3501 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3502 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3503 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3505 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3507 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3508 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3509 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3510 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3513 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3515 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3516 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3518 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3520 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3521 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3522 C<can> may break this.
3524 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3526 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3529 no warnings 'redefine';
3530 eval "sub name { ... }";
3533 =item Substitution loop
3535 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3536 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3537 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3538 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3540 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3542 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3543 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3544 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3546 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3548 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3549 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3550 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3552 =item substr outside of string
3554 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3555 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3556 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3557 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3558 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3560 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3562 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3563 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3565 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3567 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3568 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3569 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3570 clustering parentheses:
3572 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3574 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3575 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3577 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3579 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3580 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3581 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3583 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3585 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3586 and effective uids or gids.
3590 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3594 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3596 A keyword is misspelled.
3597 A semicolon is missing.
3599 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3600 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3601 A closing quote is missing.
3603 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3604 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3605 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3606 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3607 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3608 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3609 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3610 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3611 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3614 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3616 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3617 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3620 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3622 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3623 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3624 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3626 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
3628 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3630 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
3632 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3634 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3636 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3637 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3638 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3639 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3641 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3643 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3644 before now. Check your control flow.
3646 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
3648 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
3649 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
3651 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3653 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3654 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3656 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3658 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3659 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3661 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3663 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3664 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3673 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3674 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3676 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3678 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3679 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3680 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3681 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3684 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3686 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3687 to the probings of Configure.
3689 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3691 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3692 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3693 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3696 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
3698 (F) Currently this attribute is not supported on C<my> or C<sub>
3699 declarations. See L<perlfunc/our>.
3701 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3703 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3705 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3706 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3707 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3708 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3709 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3710 target of the change to
3711 %ENV which produced the warning.
3713 =item thread failed to start: %s
3715 (F) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
3717 =item Tied variable freed while still in use
3719 (F) An access method for a tied variable (e.g. FETCH) did something to
3720 free the variable. Since continuing the current operation is likely
3721 to result in a coredump, Perl is bailing out instead.
3723 =item times not implemented
3725 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3726 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3728 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
3730 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
3731 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
3732 specified an illegal mapping.
3733 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
3735 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
3737 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
3739 =item Too few args to syscall
3741 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3742 system call to call, silly dilly.
3744 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3746 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3747 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3748 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3750 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3752 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3753 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3754 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3755 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3758 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3759 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3760 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3761 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3763 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3764 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3766 =item Too late to run %s block
3768 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3769 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3770 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3771 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3774 =item Too many args to syscall
3776 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3778 =item Too many arguments for %s
3780 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3784 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3785 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3789 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3790 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3792 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3794 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3795 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3797 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3799 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3800 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3801 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3803 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3805 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3808 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
3810 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
3811 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
3813 =item truncate not implemented
3815 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3816 Configure knows about.
3818 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3820 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3821 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3822 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3823 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3825 =item umask not implemented
3827 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3828 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3830 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3832 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3834 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3836 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3837 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3839 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3841 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3842 many values were temporarily localized.
3844 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3846 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3847 many blocks were entered and left.
3849 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3851 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3852 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3854 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3856 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3857 another package? See L<perlform>.
3859 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3861 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3862 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3864 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3866 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3867 since been undefined.
3869 =item Undefined subroutine called
3871 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3872 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3874 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3876 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3877 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3879 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3881 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3882 another package? See L<perlform>.
3884 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3886 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3887 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3890 =item %s: Undefined variable
3892 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3893 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3895 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3897 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3898 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3900 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3902 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3903 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3904 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3906 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3908 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3911 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3913 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3914 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3915 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
3917 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
3919 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
3920 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
3921 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
3922 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
3923 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
3924 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
3926 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3928 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3929 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3930 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3931 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3933 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3935 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3937 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3939 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3940 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3941 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3942 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3943 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3946 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3947 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3949 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
3951 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
3952 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
3954 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
3956 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
3957 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
3959 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3961 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
3962 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
3964 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
3965 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
3968 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3970 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3971 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3972 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3973 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3975 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3977 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3978 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3979 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3980 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3982 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3984 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3985 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3986 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3987 you were last editing.
3989 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3991 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3992 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3993 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3996 =item Unrecognized character %s
3998 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3999 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
4000 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4002 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
4004 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4005 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4006 understood literally.
4008 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
4010 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4013 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4015 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4016 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
4017 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
4018 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4019 escape was discovered.
4021 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4023 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4024 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4027 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4029 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4030 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4031 bad switch on your behalf.)
4033 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4035 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4036 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4037 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4039 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4041 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4043 =item Unsupported function %s
4045 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4046 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4048 =item Unsupported function fork
4050 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4052 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4053 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4054 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4056 =item Unsupported script encoding
4058 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4059 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
4061 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4063 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4064 least that's what Configure thought.
4066 =item Unterminated attribute list
4068 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4069 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4070 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4071 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4073 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4075 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4076 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4077 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4078 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4080 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4082 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4083 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4084 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4086 =item Unterminated <> operator
4088 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4089 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4090 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4091 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4093 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4095 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4096 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4098 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4100 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4101 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4103 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4105 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4106 See L<Win32> for more information.
4108 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4110 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4111 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4113 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4117 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4119 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4120 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4122 =item Useless localization of %s
4124 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4125 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4126 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4128 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4130 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4131 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4133 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4137 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4139 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4140 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4142 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4144 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4145 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4146 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4147 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4148 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4149 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4154 when you meant to say
4156 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4158 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4159 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4164 when you should have said
4168 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
4169 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
4170 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
4171 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
4172 L<perlref> for more on this.
4174 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
4175 since they are often used in statements like
4177 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
4179 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
4182 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
4184 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
4186 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
4188 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
4192 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
4194 =item Useless use of %s with no values
4196 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
4197 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
4198 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
4199 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
4200 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
4201 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
4203 =item "use" not allowed in expression
4205 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
4206 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
4208 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4210 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
4211 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4213 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4215 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4216 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4217 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4220 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4221 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4223 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4225 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4226 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4228 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4230 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4231 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4232 used. (This may change in the future.)
4234 =item Use of freed value in iteration
4236 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
4237 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
4240 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
4242 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
4243 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
4244 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
4245 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
4247 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4249 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4250 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4252 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4254 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4255 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4256 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4258 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4260 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4261 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4262 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4264 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4266 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4267 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4268 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4269 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4272 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4273 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4274 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4275 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4278 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4279 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4280 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4281 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4284 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4285 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4286 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4288 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4290 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4291 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4293 =item Use of $# is deprecated
4295 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
4296 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4298 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4300 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4301 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4302 old way has bad side effects.
4304 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4306 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4307 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4308 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4310 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
4312 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
4313 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
4314 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
4315 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
4316 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
4317 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
4318 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
4320 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
4324 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
4326 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4328 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4329 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4330 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4333 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4335 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4336 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4337 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4339 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4340 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4341 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4342 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4344 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4346 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4347 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4348 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4349 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4350 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4351 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4353 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4355 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4356 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4357 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4358 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4360 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4362 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4363 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4364 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4366 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4367 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4368 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4369 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4370 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4371 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4374 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4376 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4377 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4378 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4379 be removed in a future version.
4381 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4383 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4384 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4385 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4386 removed in a future version.
4388 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4390 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4391 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4392 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4393 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4394 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4395 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4396 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4398 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4400 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4401 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4402 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4403 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4404 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4405 C<defined> operator.
4407 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4409 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4410 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4411 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4414 =item Variable "%s" is not available
4416 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
4417 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
4418 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
4419 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
4420 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
4421 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
4423 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
4425 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
4426 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
4427 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
4428 now been created and is live:
4430 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
4432 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
4433 gone out of scope, for example,
4441 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
4442 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
4444 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4446 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4447 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4448 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4449 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4450 front of your variable.
4452 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4454 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4455 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4456 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4458 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4460 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4461 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4462 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4463 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4464 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4466 =item Variable syntax
4468 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4469 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4472 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4474 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4475 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
4477 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
4478 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4479 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4480 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4481 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4482 variable will no longer be shared.
4484 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4485 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4486 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
4487 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4489 =item Version number must be a constant number
4491 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4492 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4495 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4497 (W portable) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4498 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4499 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4500 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4501 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4502 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4505 =item Warning: something's wrong
4507 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4508 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4510 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4512 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4513 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4516 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4518 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4519 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4520 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4521 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4525 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4529 but in actual fact, you got
4533 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4535 =item Wide character in %s
4537 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4538 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
4539 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
4540 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
4541 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
4542 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
4543 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4545 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
4547 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
4548 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
4549 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
4550 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
4552 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4554 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4555 before now. Check your control flow.
4557 =item %s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
4559 When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
4560 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
4561 this encoding, for example
4563 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
4565 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
4567 =item 'X' outside of string
4569 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
4570 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4572 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
4574 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4575 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4577 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4579 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4582 =item Xsub called in sort
4584 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4587 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4589 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4590 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4591 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4594 =item You need to quote "%s"
4596 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4597 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4598 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4599 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4600 what you want, put an & in front.)
4602 =item Your random numbers are not that random
4604 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
4605 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
4606 Something Very Wrong.