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 (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
137 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
143 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
145 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element or a
146 subroutine name, such as:
152 or a hash or array slice, such as:
154 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
155 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
157 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
159 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
160 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
163 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
165 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
166 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
167 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
169 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
171 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
172 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
173 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
174 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
175 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
176 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
178 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
180 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
181 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
183 =item assertion botched: %s
185 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
187 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
189 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
191 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
193 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
194 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
195 know which context to supply to the right side.
197 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
199 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
200 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
201 Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
202 created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
203 thread. See L<threads>.
205 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
207 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
208 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
210 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
212 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
213 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
214 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
220 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
222 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
223 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
226 bless $self, "$proto";
228 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
230 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
231 which is not in its key set.
233 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
235 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
236 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
238 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
240 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
241 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
242 outside any of those arenas.
244 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
246 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
247 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
248 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
249 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
251 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
253 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
254 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
255 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
256 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
259 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
261 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
263 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
265 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
266 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
267 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
268 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
269 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
270 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
273 =item Attempt to join self
275 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
276 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
277 to move the join() to some other thread.
279 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
281 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
282 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
283 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
284 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
285 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
288 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
290 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
291 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
292 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
295 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
297 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
298 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
299 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
301 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
304 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
306 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
307 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
308 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
310 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
312 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
313 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
314 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
315 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
317 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
319 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
320 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
321 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
323 =item Bad filehandle: %s
325 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
326 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
327 open(), or did it in another package.
329 =item Bad free() ignored
331 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
332 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
333 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
335 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
336 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
337 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
341 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
343 =item Badly placed ()'s
345 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
346 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
349 =item Bad name after %s::
351 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
352 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
361 $sym = "mypack::$var";
363 =item Bad realloc() ignored
365 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
366 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
367 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
369 =item Bad symbol for array
371 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
372 wasn't a symbol table entry.
374 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
376 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
377 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
380 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
382 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
383 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
385 =item Bad symbol for hash
387 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
388 wasn't a symbol table entry.
390 =item Bareword found in conditional
392 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
393 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
394 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
398 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
401 use constant TYPO => 1;
402 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
404 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
406 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
408 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
409 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
410 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
412 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
414 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
415 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
416 you need to predeclare a package?
418 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
420 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
421 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
424 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
426 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
427 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
428 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
429 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
430 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
432 =item \1 better written as $1
434 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
435 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
436 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
437 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
438 there are more than 9 backreferences.
440 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
442 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
443 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
444 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
446 =item bind() on closed socket %s
448 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
449 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
451 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
453 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
454 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
456 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
458 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
460 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
462 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
465 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
467 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
468 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
469 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
471 =item Callback called exit
473 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
474 exited by calling exit.
476 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
478 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
479 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
480 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
481 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
482 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
483 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
484 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
485 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
487 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
489 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
490 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
491 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
492 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
494 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
496 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
497 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
499 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
501 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
502 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
503 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
504 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
506 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
508 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
509 be directly assigned not.
511 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
513 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
514 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
515 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
517 =item Can't bless non-reference value
519 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
520 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
522 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
524 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
525 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
527 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
529 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
531 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
533 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
534 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
535 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
537 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
539 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
540 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
541 like this will reproduce the error:
544 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
545 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
547 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
549 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
550 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
551 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
552 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
554 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
556 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
557 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
558 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
559 Something like this will reproduce the error:
562 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
563 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
565 =item Can't chdir to %s
567 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
568 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
570 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
572 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
575 =item Can't coerce array into hash
577 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
578 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
579 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
581 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
583 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
584 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
594 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
596 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
598 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
599 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
601 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
603 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
604 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
606 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
608 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
611 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
613 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
614 quotas or other plumbing problems.
616 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
618 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
619 class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration. The semantics may be
620 extended for other types of variables in future.
622 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
624 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
625 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
627 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
629 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
630 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
632 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
634 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
637 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
639 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
640 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
641 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
643 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
645 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
646 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
647 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
649 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
651 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
652 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
653 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
655 =item Can't do setegid!
657 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
660 =item Can't do seteuid!
662 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
664 =item Can't do setuid
666 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
667 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
668 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
669 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
670 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
671 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
673 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
675 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
676 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
678 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
680 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
681 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
684 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
686 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
687 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
688 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
689 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
691 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
693 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
694 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
695 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
696 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
697 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
698 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
703 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
704 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
705 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
707 =item Can't execute %s
709 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
710 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
712 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
714 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
715 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
717 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
719 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
720 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
721 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
722 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
724 =item Can't find label %s
726 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
727 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
729 =item Can't find %s on PATH
731 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
734 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
736 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
737 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
738 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
740 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
742 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
743 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
744 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
746 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
748 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
749 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
750 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
752 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
754 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
755 example C<\p{Lu}> is all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
756 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
757 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
758 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
763 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
766 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
768 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
769 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
770 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
771 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
772 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
773 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
774 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
775 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
776 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
777 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
778 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
779 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
780 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
781 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
782 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
784 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
786 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
787 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
789 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
791 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
792 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
794 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
796 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
797 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
799 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
801 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
802 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
803 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
804 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
806 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
808 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
809 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
810 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
812 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
814 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
817 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
819 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
820 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
821 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
822 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
824 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
826 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
827 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
828 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
829 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
830 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
831 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
833 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
835 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
836 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
837 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
838 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
839 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
840 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
843 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
845 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
846 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
848 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
850 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
851 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
852 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
853 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
854 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
855 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
858 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
860 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
861 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
862 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
865 =item Can't localize through a reference
867 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
868 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
869 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
870 that $ref will still be a reference.
872 =item Can't locate %s
874 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
875 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
876 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
877 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
878 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
879 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
880 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
882 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
884 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
885 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
886 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
887 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
889 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
891 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
892 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
893 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
895 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
897 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
898 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
899 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
901 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
903 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
904 doesn't seem to exist.
906 =item Can't locate package %s for the parents of %s
908 (W syntax) You did not define (or require/use) the first package,
909 which is named as a (possibly indirect) parent of the second by
910 C<@ISA> inheritance. Perl will treat this as if the undefined
911 package had an empty C<@ISA>.
913 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
915 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
916 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
918 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
920 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
923 =item Can't modify %s in %s
925 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
926 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
928 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
930 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
933 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
935 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
936 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
938 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
940 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
943 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
945 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
946 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
947 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
948 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
949 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
950 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
952 =item Can't open %s: %s
954 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
955 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
956 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
957 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
960 =item Can't open a reference
962 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
963 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
967 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
968 open is not supported.
970 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
972 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
973 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
974 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
975 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
977 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
979 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
980 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
981 the command line for writing.
983 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
985 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
986 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
987 command line for reading.
989 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
991 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
992 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
993 the command line for writing.
995 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
997 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
998 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1001 =item Can't open perl script%s
1003 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1005 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1006 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1007 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1009 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1011 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1012 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1013 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1014 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1017 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1019 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1020 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1021 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1022 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1023 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1024 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1026 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1028 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1029 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1030 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1032 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1034 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1035 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1037 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1039 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1040 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1042 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1044 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1045 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1046 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1048 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
1050 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1053 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1055 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1056 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1059 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1061 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1062 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1064 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1066 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1067 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1068 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1069 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1072 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1074 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1075 open already. Bizarre.
1077 =item Can't swap uid and euid
1079 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1082 =item Can't take log of %g
1084 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1085 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1086 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1089 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1091 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1092 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1093 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1095 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1097 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1098 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1099 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1103 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1104 as the main Perl stack.
1106 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1108 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1109 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1110 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1111 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1113 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1115 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1116 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1117 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1119 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1121 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1122 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1124 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1126 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1127 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1129 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1131 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1132 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1133 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1135 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1137 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1138 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1139 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1141 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1143 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1146 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1148 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1149 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1150 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1151 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1154 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1156 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1157 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1158 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1159 is inside a big-endian group.
1161 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1163 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1164 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1165 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1166 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1169 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1171 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1172 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1173 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1175 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1177 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1178 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1180 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1182 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1183 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1184 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1186 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1188 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1189 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1190 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1191 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1192 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1195 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1197 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1198 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1199 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1200 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1202 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1204 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1205 references can be weakened.
1207 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1209 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1210 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1211 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1213 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1219 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1220 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1221 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1225 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1228 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1234 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1235 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1238 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1240 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1246 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1247 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1248 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1250 pack("c", $x & 255);
1252 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1255 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1257 (W unpack) You tried something like
1259 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1261 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1262 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1263 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1265 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1267 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1269 (W pack) You tried something like
1271 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1273 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1274 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1275 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1277 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1279 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1281 (W unpack) You tried something like
1283 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1285 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1286 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1287 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1289 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1291 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1293 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1295 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1297 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1298 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1300 =item Code missing after '/'
1302 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1303 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1305 =item %s: Command not found
1307 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1308 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1310 =item Compilation failed in require
1312 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1313 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1314 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1316 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1318 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1319 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1320 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1321 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1322 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1323 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1324 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1325 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1326 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1328 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1330 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1331 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1332 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1333 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1334 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1335 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1336 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1339 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1341 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1342 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1343 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1344 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1345 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1346 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1347 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1350 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1352 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1353 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1354 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1356 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1358 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1359 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1360 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1361 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1364 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1366 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1367 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1368 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1372 =item Constant is not %s reference
1374 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1375 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1376 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1377 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1378 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1380 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1382 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1383 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1384 commentary and workarounds.
1386 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1388 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1389 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1392 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1394 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1395 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1397 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1399 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1401 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1403 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1404 expression compiler gave it.
1406 =item corrupted regexp program
1408 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1411 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1413 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1415 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1417 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1418 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1421 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1423 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1424 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1425 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1426 which case it indicates something else.
1428 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1430 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1431 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1432 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1434 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1436 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1437 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1438 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1440 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1442 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1443 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1445 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1447 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1448 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1449 that triggers this error.
1451 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1453 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1454 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1455 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1456 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1457 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1458 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1459 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1461 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1465 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1467 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1468 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1470 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1472 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1474 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1475 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1476 to create a dangling reference.
1478 =item Did not produce a valid header
1482 =item %s did not return a true value
1484 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1485 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1486 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1487 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1489 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1491 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1494 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1496 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1497 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1500 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1502 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1503 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1508 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1509 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1511 =item Document contains no data
1515 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1517 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1518 define a C<$VERSION.>
1520 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1522 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1523 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1525 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1527 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1529 =item do_study: out of memory
1531 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1533 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1535 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1536 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1537 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1538 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1539 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1540 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1541 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1542 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1544 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1546 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1547 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1549 =item dump is not supported
1551 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1553 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1555 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1558 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1560 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1561 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1563 =item elseif should be elsif
1565 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1566 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1567 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1568 unlikely to be what you want.
1572 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1573 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1574 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1576 =item entering effective %s failed
1578 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1579 effective uids or gids failed.
1581 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1583 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1584 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1585 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1587 =item Error converting file specification %s
1589 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1590 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1591 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1592 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1593 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1595 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1597 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1598 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1599 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1601 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1603 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1604 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1605 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1606 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1607 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1608 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1610 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1612 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1613 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1614 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1616 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1618 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1619 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1621 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1624 =item Excessively long <> operator
1626 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1627 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1628 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1629 variable and glob that.
1631 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1633 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1635 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1637 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1639 =item Exiting eval via %s
1641 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1642 goto, or a loop control statement.
1644 =item Exiting format via %s
1646 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1647 goto, or a loop control statement.
1649 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1651 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1652 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1653 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1655 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1657 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1658 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1660 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1662 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1663 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1665 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1667 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1668 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1669 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1670 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1672 =item %s: Expression syntax
1674 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1675 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1677 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1679 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1680 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1681 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1683 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1685 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1686 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1687 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1688 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1689 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1691 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1693 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1694 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1695 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1696 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1698 =item fcntl is not implemented
1700 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1701 PDP-11 or something?
1703 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1705 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1708 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1710 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1711 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1712 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1715 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1717 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1718 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1719 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1720 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1722 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1724 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1725 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1726 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1727 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1728 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1729 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1731 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1733 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1734 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1737 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1739 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1740 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1742 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1744 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1745 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1746 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1749 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1751 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1752 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1753 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1756 =item Format not terminated
1758 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1759 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1761 =item Format %s redefined
1763 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1766 no warnings 'redefine';
1767 eval "format NAME =...";
1770 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1780 (or something like that).
1782 =item %s found where operator expected
1784 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1785 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1786 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1787 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1789 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1791 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1793 =item gethostent not implemented
1795 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1796 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1799 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1801 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1802 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1804 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1806 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1807 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1809 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1811 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1812 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1813 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1815 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1817 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1818 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1819 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1820 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1822 =item glob failed (%s)
1824 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1825 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1826 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1827 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1828 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1829 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1830 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1831 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1832 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1833 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1834 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1836 =item Glob not terminated
1838 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1839 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1840 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1841 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1843 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1845 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1846 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1848 =item goto must have label
1850 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1851 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1853 =item ()-group starts with a count
1855 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1856 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1857 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1859 =item %s had compilation errors
1861 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1863 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1865 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1866 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1867 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1869 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1871 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1872 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1874 =item %s has too many errors
1876 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1877 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1879 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1881 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1882 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1883 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1885 =item Identifier too long
1887 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1888 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1889 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1890 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1892 =item Ignoring %s in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1894 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return multi-char
1895 or zero length sequences. When such an escape is used in a character class
1896 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
1897 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
1899 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1901 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1903 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1905 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1906 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1909 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1911 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1912 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1913 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1914 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1915 to your Perl administrator.
1917 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1919 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1920 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1922 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1924 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1925 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1927 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
1929 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
1931 =item Illegal division by zero
1933 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1934 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1937 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1939 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1940 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1941 number stopped before the illegal character.
1943 =item Illegal modulus zero
1945 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1946 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1948 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1950 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1951 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1953 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1955 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1957 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1959 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1960 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1962 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1964 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1965 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
1967 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1969 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1970 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1971 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1973 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1975 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1976 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1977 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1980 =item (in cleanup) %s
1982 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1983 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1984 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1985 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1986 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1988 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1989 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1991 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
1993 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
1994 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
1995 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
1997 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1999 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2000 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2001 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2003 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2005 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2006 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2007 either consume text or fail.
2009 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2012 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2014 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2015 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2016 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2017 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2019 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2021 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2022 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2023 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2024 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2025 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2026 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2027 L<perlsec> for more information.
2029 =item Insecure directory in %s
2031 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2032 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2033 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2036 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2038 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2039 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2040 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2041 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2042 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2044 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2046 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2047 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2048 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2049 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2050 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2051 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2052 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2053 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2056 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2058 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2059 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2060 integers for your architecture.
2062 =item Integer overflow in version
2064 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2065 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2066 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2067 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2068 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2071 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2073 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2074 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2077 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2079 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2080 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2081 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2082 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2083 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2084 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2086 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2088 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2089 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2092 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2094 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2095 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2096 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2097 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2099 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2101 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2102 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2104 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2106 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2107 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2109 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2111 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2112 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2114 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2116 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2117 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2118 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2119 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2120 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2121 escape was discovered.
2123 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2125 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")>
2126 or C<use mro 'foo'>, where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO).
2127 (Currently, the only valid ones are C<dfs> and C<c3>). See L<mro>.
2129 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2131 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2132 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2133 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2134 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2135 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2137 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2139 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2140 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2142 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2144 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2145 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2146 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2149 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2151 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2152 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2153 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2154 list was terminated too soon.
2156 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2158 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2159 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2160 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2163 =item Invalid version format (multiple underscores)
2165 (F) Versions may contain at most a single underscore, which signals
2166 that the version is a beta release. See L<version> for the allowed
2169 =item Invalid version format (underscores before decimal)
2171 (F) Versions may not contain decimals after the optional underscore.
2172 See L<version> for the allowed version formats.
2174 =item ioctl is not implemented
2176 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2177 strange for a machine that supports C.
2179 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2181 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2182 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2184 =item IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
2186 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2187 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2190 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2192 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2193 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2195 =item $* is no longer supported
2197 (S deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2198 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2199 C<//m> and C<//s> regexp modifiers instead.
2201 =item $# is no longer supported
2203 (S deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2204 been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2205 printf/sprintf functions instead.
2207 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2209 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2210 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2213 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2215 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2218 =item junk on end of regexp
2220 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2222 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2224 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2225 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2228 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2230 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2231 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2234 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2236 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2237 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2240 =item leaving effective %s failed
2242 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2243 effective uids or gids failed.
2245 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2247 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2248 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2249 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2251 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2253 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2254 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2257 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2259 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2260 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2262 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2264 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2265 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2266 instead on the filehandle.)
2268 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2270 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2271 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2272 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2274 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2276 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2277 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2279 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2281 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2282 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2284 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2286 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2293 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2294 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2295 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2296 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2298 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2300 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2301 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2302 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2303 when the function is called.
2305 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2307 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2308 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2310 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2311 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2312 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2314 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2315 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2316 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2319 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2321 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2323 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2324 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2326 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2328 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2329 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2331 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2333 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2334 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2336 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2338 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2339 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2341 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%s) exceeded
2343 (F) Perl aborted due to a too important number of signals pending. This
2344 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2345 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2346 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2347 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2349 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2351 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2352 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2353 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2356 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2358 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2359 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2362 =item % may not be used in pack
2364 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2365 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2366 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2368 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2370 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2371 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2373 =item Method %s not permitted
2377 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2379 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2380 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2381 ended earlier on the current line.
2383 =item Misplaced _ in number
2385 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2386 separate two digits.
2388 =item Missing argument to -%c
2390 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2391 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2393 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
2395 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2396 double-quotish context.
2398 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2400 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2401 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2403 =item Missing command in piped open
2405 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2406 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2409 =item Missing control char name in \c
2411 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2414 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2416 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2417 they have a name with which they can be found.
2419 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2421 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2422 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2423 can vary from one line to the next.
2425 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2427 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2428 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2430 =item Missing right brace on %s
2432 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2434 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2436 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2437 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2440 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2442 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2443 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2444 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2446 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2448 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2449 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2450 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2452 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2455 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2457 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2458 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2461 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2462 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2465 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2467 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2468 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2471 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2473 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2474 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2476 =item Module name must be constant
2478 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2480 =item Module name required with -%c option
2482 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2483 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2484 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2486 =item More than one argument to open
2488 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2489 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2490 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2491 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2493 =item msg%s not implemented
2495 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2497 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2499 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2500 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2502 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2504 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2505 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2506 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2508 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2510 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2513 =item "%s" variable %s can't be in a package
2515 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2516 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2517 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2519 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2521 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2522 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2523 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2524 provided for this purpose.
2526 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2527 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2528 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2529 will not trigger this warning.
2531 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2533 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2534 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2536 =item Negative length
2538 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2539 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2541 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2543 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2544 greater than or equal to zero.
2546 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2548 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2549 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2550 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2552 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2553 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2555 =item %s never introduced
2557 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2558 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2560 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2562 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2563 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2566 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2568 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2569 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2570 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2571 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2573 =item No comma allowed after %s
2575 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2576 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2577 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2579 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2580 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2581 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2582 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2583 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2584 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2585 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2586 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2587 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2588 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2589 this error was triggered?
2591 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2593 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2594 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2595 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2597 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2599 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2600 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2601 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2604 =item No dbm on this machine
2606 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2607 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2609 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2611 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2612 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2613 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2614 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2616 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2618 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2620 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2622 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2623 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2624 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2626 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2628 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2629 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2631 =item No input file after < on command line
2633 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2634 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2635 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2639 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2640 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2642 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2644 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2645 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2646 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2647 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2649 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2651 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2652 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2654 =item No output file after > on command line
2656 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2657 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2658 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2660 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2662 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2663 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2664 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2666 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2668 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2669 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2670 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2672 =item No Perl script found in input
2674 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2675 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2677 =item No setregid available
2679 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2682 =item No setreuid available
2684 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2687 =item No %s specified for -%c
2689 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2690 you haven't specified one.
2692 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2694 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2695 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2696 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2698 =item No such class %s
2700 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but
2701 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2703 =item No such pipe open
2705 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2706 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2707 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2709 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2711 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2712 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2713 names on your system.
2715 =item Not a CODE reference
2717 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2718 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2719 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2722 =item Not a format reference
2724 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2725 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2727 =item Not a GLOB reference
2729 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2730 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2731 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2732 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2734 =item Not a HASH reference
2736 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2737 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2738 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2740 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2742 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2743 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2744 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2746 =item Not a perl script
2748 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2749 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2752 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2754 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2755 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2756 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2758 =item Not a subroutine reference
2760 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2761 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2762 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2765 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2767 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2768 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2770 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2772 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2774 =item Not enough format arguments
2776 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2777 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2781 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2782 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2785 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2787 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2788 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2789 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2790 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2791 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2793 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
2795 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
2796 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
2797 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
2799 =item Null filename used
2801 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2802 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2804 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2806 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2809 =item Null picture in formline
2811 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2812 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2813 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2817 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2819 =item NULL regexp argument
2821 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2823 =item NULL regexp parameter
2825 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2827 =item Number too long
2829 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2830 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2831 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2832 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2835 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2837 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2838 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2841 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2843 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2844 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2845 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2847 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2849 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2851 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2852 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2854 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2856 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2857 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2859 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2861 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2862 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2864 =item Offset outside string
2866 (F, W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
2867 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
2868 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
2869 take place when going past the end of the string when either
2870 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
2871 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
2874 =item %s() on unopened %s
2876 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2877 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2878 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2880 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2882 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2883 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2887 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2891 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2893 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
2895 (W io deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
2896 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
2897 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
2900 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
2902 (W io deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
2903 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
2904 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
2907 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
2909 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2910 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2911 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2912 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2914 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2916 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2917 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2918 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2919 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2922 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2924 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2925 in the current lexical scope.
2927 =item Out of memory!
2929 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2930 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2931 no option but to exit immediately.
2933 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
2934 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
2935 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
2936 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
2937 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
2939 =item Out of memory during %s extend
2941 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
2942 the largest possible memory allocation.
2944 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2946 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2947 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2948 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2949 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2951 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2953 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2954 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2957 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2958 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2959 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2960 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2961 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2962 where the failed request happened.
2964 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2966 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2967 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2968 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2970 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2972 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2973 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2976 =item '.' outside of string in pack
2978 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
2979 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
2981 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
2983 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2984 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2986 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
2988 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2989 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
2990 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2992 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2994 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2995 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2996 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2997 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2999 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3001 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3002 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3006 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3007 page. See L<perlform>.
3011 (P) An internal error.
3013 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3015 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3016 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3017 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3018 enter this branch on this platform.
3020 =item panic: ck_grep
3022 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3024 =item panic: ck_split
3026 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3028 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3030 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3031 there are in the savestack.
3033 =item panic: del_backref
3035 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3038 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3040 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3041 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3042 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3043 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3047 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3048 it wasn't an eval context.
3050 =item panic: do_subst
3052 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3055 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3057 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3060 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3062 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3067 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3071 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3072 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3074 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3076 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hashes entries tried repeatedly,
3077 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3078 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3079 adds a new object to the hash.
3081 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3083 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3085 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3087 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3089 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3091 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3095 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3096 it wasn't a block context.
3098 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3100 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3103 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3105 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3106 invalid enum on the top of it.
3108 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3110 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3111 references to an object.
3115 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3117 =item panic: memory wrap
3119 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3121 =item panic: pad_alloc
3123 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3124 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3126 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3128 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3129 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3131 =item panic: pad_free po
3133 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3135 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3137 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3138 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3140 =item panic: pad_sv po
3142 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3144 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3146 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3147 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3149 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3151 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3153 =item panic: pp_iter
3155 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3157 =item panic: pp_match%s
3159 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3162 =item panic: pp_split
3164 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3166 =item panic: realloc
3168 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3170 =item panic: restartop
3172 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3173 didn't supply the destination.
3177 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3178 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3180 =item panic: scan_num
3182 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3184 =item panic: sv_insert
3186 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3189 =item panic: top_env
3191 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3193 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3195 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3198 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3200 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3201 to even) byte length.
3205 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3207 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3209 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3210 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3211 nesting limit is exceeded.
3213 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3216 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3218 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3224 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3226 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3228 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3230 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3231 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3232 redirected it with select().)
3234 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3236 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3237 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3238 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3240 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3242 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3243 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3244 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3245 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3247 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3249 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3250 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3251 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3253 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3255 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3256 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3258 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3260 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3262 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3264 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3266 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3267 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3270 are supported and installed on your system.
3271 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3273 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3274 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3275 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3276 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3277 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3278 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3279 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3280 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3281 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3282 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3284 =item Permission denied
3286 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
3288 =item pid %x not a child
3290 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3291 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3292 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3294 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3296 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3298 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
3300 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
3301 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
3303 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3305 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3306 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3307 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3308 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3309 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3311 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3313 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3314 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3316 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3318 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3319 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3320 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3321 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3322 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3323 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3325 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3327 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3328 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3329 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3330 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3331 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3332 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3334 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3336 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3337 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3338 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3339 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3340 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3341 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3343 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3345 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3346 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3347 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3348 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3350 You probably wrote something like this:
3357 when you should have written this:
3364 If you really want comments, build your list the
3365 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3369 'b', # another comment
3372 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3374 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3375 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3376 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3379 You probably wrote something like this:
3383 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3384 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3388 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3390 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3391 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3392 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3393 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3395 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3397 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3398 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3400 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3402 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3403 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3404 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3405 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3407 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3409 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3410 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3411 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3412 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3414 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
3416 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
3420 use attrs qw(locked);
3423 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
3429 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
3430 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
3432 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3434 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3438 is now misinterpreted as
3442 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3443 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3444 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3447 =item Premature end of script headers
3451 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3453 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3454 before now. Check your control flow.
3456 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3458 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3459 before now. Check your control flow.
3461 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3463 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3464 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3465 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3466 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3469 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3471 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3472 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3474 =item Prototype not terminated
3476 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3479 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3481 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3482 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3483 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3485 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3487 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3488 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3489 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3491 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3493 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3494 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3495 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3496 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3497 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3499 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3502 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3504 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3505 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3506 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3507 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3509 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3511 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3512 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3514 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3516 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3517 before now. Check your control flow.
3519 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3521 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3523 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3525 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3527 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3529 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3531 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3533 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3536 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3538 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3539 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3540 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3542 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3544 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3545 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3546 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3548 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3550 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3551 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3554 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3556 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3557 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3558 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3559 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3561 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3562 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3563 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3564 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3566 =item Reference is already weak
3568 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3569 Doing so has no effect.
3571 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3573 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3574 a reference count of other than 1.
3576 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3578 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3579 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3580 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3581 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3583 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3585 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3586 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3587 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3588 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3590 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3593 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3595 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3596 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3597 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3599 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3602 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3604 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3605 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3606 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3607 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3609 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3612 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3614 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3615 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3616 of the C<....> part.
3618 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3621 =item regexp memory corruption
3623 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3624 expression compiler gave it.
3626 =item Regexp out of space
3628 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3631 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
3633 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
3634 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
3635 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
3637 =item Reversed %s= operator
3639 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3640 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3642 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3644 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
3645 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3647 =item Runaway format
3649 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3650 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3651 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3652 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3653 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3655 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3657 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3658 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3659 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3660 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3662 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3664 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3665 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3666 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3667 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3668 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3669 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3670 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3672 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3673 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3674 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3677 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3679 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3680 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3681 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3682 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3683 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3684 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3685 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3687 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3688 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3689 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3692 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3694 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3695 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3697 =item Search pattern not terminated
3699 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3700 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3701 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3703 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
3704 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
3705 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
3706 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
3708 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
3710 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
3713 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
3714 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
3715 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
3716 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
3718 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3720 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3721 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3723 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3725 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
3726 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3728 =item select not implemented
3730 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3732 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3734 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3735 the current implementation.
3737 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3739 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3740 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3742 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3744 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3745 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3747 =item sem%s not implemented
3749 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3751 =item send() on closed socket %s
3753 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3754 before now. Check your control flow.
3756 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3758 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3759 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3762 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3764 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3765 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3766 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3768 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3770 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3771 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3772 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3774 =item Sequence \\%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3776 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
3777 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
3779 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3781 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3782 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3783 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3786 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3788 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3789 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3790 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3793 =item 500 Server error
3799 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3800 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3801 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3802 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3803 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3804 produce a valid header".
3806 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3808 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3809 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3810 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3811 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3812 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3813 Please see the following for more information:
3815 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3816 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3817 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3819 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3821 =item setegid() not implemented
3823 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3824 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3827 =item seteuid() not implemented
3829 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3830 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3833 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3835 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3836 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3839 =item setrgid() not implemented
3841 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3842 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3845 =item setruid() not implemented
3847 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3848 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3851 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3853 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3854 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3855 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3857 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3859 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3860 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3862 =item Setuid script not plain file
3864 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
3865 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
3867 =item shm%s not implemented
3869 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3871 =item !=~ should be !~
3873 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
3874 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
3875 operators: probably not what you intended.
3877 =item <> should be quotes
3879 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3882 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3884 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3885 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3886 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3887 probably not what you had in mind.
3889 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3891 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3894 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3896 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3897 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3899 =item sort is now a reserved word
3901 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3902 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3904 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3906 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3907 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3908 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3910 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3912 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3913 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3915 =item splice() offset past end of array
3917 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3918 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3919 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3920 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3925 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3926 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3927 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3929 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3931 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3932 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3933 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3934 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3937 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3939 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3940 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3942 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s"
3944 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3945 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3946 C<can> may break this.
3948 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3950 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3953 no warnings 'redefine';
3954 eval "sub name { ... }";
3957 =item Substitution loop
3959 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3960 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3961 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3962 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
3964 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3966 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3967 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3968 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3970 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3972 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3973 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3974 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3976 =item substr outside of string
3978 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3979 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3980 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3981 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3982 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3984 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3986 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3987 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3989 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
3991 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
3992 inferior to its current type.
3994 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3996 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3997 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3998 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3999 clustering parentheses:
4001 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4003 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4004 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4006 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4008 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4009 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4010 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4012 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4014 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4015 and effective uids or gids.
4019 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4023 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4025 A keyword is misspelled.
4026 A semicolon is missing.
4028 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4029 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4030 A closing quote is missing.
4032 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4033 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4034 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4035 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4036 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4037 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4038 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4039 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4040 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4043 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4045 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4046 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4049 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4051 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4052 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4053 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4055 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4057 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4059 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4061 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4063 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4065 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4066 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4067 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4068 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4070 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4072 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4073 before now. Check your control flow.
4075 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4077 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4078 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4080 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4082 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4083 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4085 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4087 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4088 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4090 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4092 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4093 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4095 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4097 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4098 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4107 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4108 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4110 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4112 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4113 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4114 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4115 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4118 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4120 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4121 to the probings of Configure.
4123 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4125 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4126 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4127 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4130 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4132 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4134 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4136 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4138 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4139 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4140 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4141 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4142 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4143 target of the change to
4144 %ENV which produced the warning.
4146 =item thread failed to start: %s
4148 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4150 =item times not implemented
4152 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4153 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4155 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4157 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4158 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4159 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4160 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4163 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4164 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4165 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
4166 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
4168 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4169 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
4171 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4173 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4174 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4175 specified an illegal mapping.
4176 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4178 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4180 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4182 =item Too few args to syscall
4184 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4185 system call to call, silly dilly.
4187 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4189 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4190 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option. This is an error because those options
4191 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4193 =item Too late to run %s block
4195 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4196 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4197 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4198 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4201 =item Too many args to syscall
4203 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4205 =item Too many arguments for %s
4207 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4211 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4212 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4216 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4217 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4219 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4221 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4222 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4224 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4226 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4227 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4228 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4230 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4232 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4233 y/// or y[][] construct.
4235 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4237 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4238 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4240 =item truncate not implemented
4242 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4243 Configure knows about.
4245 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4247 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4248 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4249 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4250 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4252 =item umask not implemented
4254 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4255 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4257 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4259 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4261 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4263 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4264 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4266 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4268 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4269 many values were temporarily localized.
4271 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4273 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4274 many blocks were entered and left.
4276 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4278 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4279 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4281 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4283 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4284 another package? See L<perlform>.
4286 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4288 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4289 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4291 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4293 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4294 since been undefined.
4296 =item Undefined subroutine called
4298 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4299 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4301 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4303 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4304 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4306 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4308 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4309 another package? See L<perlform>.
4311 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4313 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4314 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4317 =item %s: Undefined variable
4319 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4320 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4322 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4324 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4325 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4327 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
4329 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
4330 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
4331 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4333 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4335 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4338 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4340 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4341 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4342 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4344 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4346 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4347 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4348 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4349 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4350 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4351 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4353 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4355 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4356 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4357 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4358 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4360 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4362 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4364 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4366 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4367 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4368 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4369 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4370 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4373 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4374 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4376 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4378 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4379 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4381 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4383 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4384 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4386 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4388 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4389 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4391 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4392 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4394 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4396 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4397 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4398 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4402 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4404 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4405 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4406 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4407 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4409 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4411 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4412 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4413 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4414 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4416 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4418 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4419 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4420 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4421 you were last editing.
4423 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4425 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4426 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4427 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4430 =item Unrecognized character %s in column %d
4432 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4433 in your Perl script (or eval) at the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4434 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4436 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4438 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4439 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4440 understood literally.
4441 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4442 escape was discovered.
4444 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
4446 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4447 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally.
4449 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4451 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4452 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally.
4453 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4454 escape was discovered.
4456 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4458 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4459 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4462 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4464 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4465 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4466 bad switch on your behalf.)
4468 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4470 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4471 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4472 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4474 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4476 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4478 =item Unsupported function %s
4480 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4481 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4483 =item Unsupported function fork
4485 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4487 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4488 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4489 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4491 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4493 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4494 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4496 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4498 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4499 least that's what Configure thought.
4501 =item Unterminated attribute list
4503 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4504 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4505 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4506 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4508 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4510 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4511 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4512 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4513 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4515 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4517 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4518 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4519 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4521 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4523 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
4524 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4526 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4528 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
4529 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4531 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4533 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
4534 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
4536 =item Unterminated <> operator
4538 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4539 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4540 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4541 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4543 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4545 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4546 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4548 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4550 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4551 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4553 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4555 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4556 See L<Win32> for more information.
4558 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4560 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4561 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4563 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4567 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4569 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4570 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4572 =item Useless localization of %s
4574 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4575 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4576 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4578 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4580 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4581 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4583 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4587 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4589 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4590 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4592 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4594 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4595 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4596 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4597 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4598 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4599 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4604 when you meant to say
4606 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4608 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4609 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4614 when you should have said
4618 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
4619 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
4620 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
4621 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
4622 L<perlref> for more on this.
4624 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
4625 since they are often used in statements like
4627 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
4629 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
4632 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
4634 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
4636 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
4638 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
4642 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
4644 =item Useless use of %s with no values
4646 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
4647 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
4648 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
4649 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
4650 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
4651 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
4653 =item "use" not allowed in expression
4655 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
4656 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
4658 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4660 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
4661 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4663 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4665 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4666 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4667 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4670 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4671 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4673 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4675 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4676 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4678 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4680 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4681 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4682 used. (This may change in the future.)
4684 =item Use of freed value in iteration
4686 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
4687 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
4690 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
4692 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
4693 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
4694 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
4695 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
4697 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4699 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4700 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4702 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4704 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4705 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4706 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4708 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4710 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4711 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4712 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4714 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4716 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4717 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4718 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4719 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4722 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4723 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4724 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4725 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4728 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4729 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4730 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4731 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4734 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4735 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4736 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4738 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4740 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4741 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4743 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4745 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4746 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4747 old way has bad side effects.
4749 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4751 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4752 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4753 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4755 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4757 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4758 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4759 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4762 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4764 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4765 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4766 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4768 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4769 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4770 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4771 operators and then you assumably know what you are doing.
4773 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4775 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4776 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4777 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4778 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4779 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4780 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4782 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4784 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4785 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4786 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4787 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4789 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4791 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4792 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4793 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4795 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
4796 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
4797 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
4798 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
4799 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
4800 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
4801 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
4802 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
4804 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4806 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4807 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4808 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4809 be removed in a future version.
4811 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4813 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4814 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4815 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4816 removed in a future version.
4818 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4820 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4821 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4822 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4823 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4824 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4825 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4826 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4828 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4830 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4831 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4832 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4833 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4834 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4835 C<defined> operator.
4837 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4839 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4840 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4841 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4844 =item Variable "%s" is not available
4846 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
4847 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
4848 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
4849 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
4850 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
4851 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
4853 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
4855 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
4856 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
4857 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
4858 now been created and is live:
4860 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
4862 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
4863 gone out of scope, for example,
4871 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
4872 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
4874 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4876 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4877 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4878 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4879 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4880 front of your variable.
4882 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
4884 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4885 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
4887 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4889 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the current
4890 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4891 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4892 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4893 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4895 =item Variable syntax
4897 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4898 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4901 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4903 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4904 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
4906 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
4907 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4908 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4909 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4910 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4911 variable will no longer be shared.
4913 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4914 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4915 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
4916 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4918 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4920 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument
4921 or check that you are using the right verb.
4923 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4925 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
4926 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
4928 =item Version number must be a constant number
4930 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4931 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4934 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
4936 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
4939 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4941 (W portable) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4942 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4943 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4944 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4945 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4946 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4949 This warning is suppressed if the C<use 5.x.y> is preceded by a
4950 C<use 5.006> (see C<use VERSION> in L<perlfunc/use>).
4952 =item Warning: something's wrong
4954 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4955 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
4957 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4959 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4960 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4963 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4965 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4966 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4967 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4968 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4972 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4976 but in actual fact, you got
4980 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4982 =item Wide character in %s
4984 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4985 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
4986 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
4987 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
4988 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
4989 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
4990 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4992 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
4994 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
4995 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
4996 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
4997 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
4999 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5001 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5002 before now. Check your control flow.
5004 =item %s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
5006 When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5007 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5008 this encoding, for example
5010 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5012 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5014 =item 'X' outside of string
5016 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5017 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5019 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5021 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5022 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5024 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5026 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5027 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5028 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5031 =item You need to quote "%s"
5033 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5034 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5035 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5036 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5037 what you want, put an & in front.)
5039 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5041 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5042 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5043 Something Very Wrong.
5049 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>.