3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
22 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
23 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
24 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warning> pragma.
27 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
28 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
29 The symbols C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
33 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
35 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
36 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
37 if you want to localize a package variable.
39 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
41 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
42 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
43 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
44 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
47 =item "no" not allowed in expression
49 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
50 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
52 =item "use" not allowed in expression
54 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
55 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
57 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
62 =item # cannot take a count
64 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
65 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
68 =item # must be followed by a, A or Z
70 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
71 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
72 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
75 =item # must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
77 (F) You had an pack template indicating a counted-length string,
78 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
81 =item # must follow a numeric type
83 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
84 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
87 =item % may only be used in unpack
89 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
90 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
91 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
93 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
95 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
96 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
98 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
100 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
101 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
103 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
105 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
106 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
107 C<'>-delimited regular expression.
109 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
111 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
112 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
113 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
115 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
117 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
118 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
119 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
120 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
121 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
122 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
123 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
125 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
127 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
130 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
132 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
134 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
137 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
139 or a hash slice, such as
141 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
142 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
144 =item %s did not return a true value
146 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
147 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
148 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
149 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
151 =item %s found where operator expected
153 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
154 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
155 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
156 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
158 =item %s had compilation errors
160 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
162 =item %s has too many errors
164 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
165 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
167 =item %s matches null string many times
169 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
170 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
172 =item %s never introduced
174 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
175 before it could possibly have been used.
179 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
181 =item %s: Command not found
183 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
184 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
187 =item %s: Expression syntax
189 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
190 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
193 =item %s: Undefined variable
195 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
196 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
201 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
202 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
205 =item (in cleanup) %s
207 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
208 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
209 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
210 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
211 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
214 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
215 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
217 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
219 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
220 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
221 the previous line just because you saw this message.
223 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
225 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
226 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
228 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
230 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
231 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
233 =item C<-p> destination: %s
235 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
236 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
237 redirected it with select().)
239 =item 500 Server error
243 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
245 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
246 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
248 =item @ outside of string
250 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
251 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
253 =item <> should be quotes
255 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
258 =item accept() on closed fd
260 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
261 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
263 =item Allocation too large: %lx
265 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
267 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
269 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
270 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
271 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
272 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
273 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
274 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
276 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
278 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
280 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
282 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
283 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
284 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
286 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
288 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
289 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
290 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
293 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
294 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
295 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
296 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
298 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
299 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
300 to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
302 =item Args must match #! line
304 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
305 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
306 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
307 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
309 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
311 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
312 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
313 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
315 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
317 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
318 is now heavily deprecated.
320 =item assertion botched: %s
322 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
324 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
326 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
328 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
330 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
331 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
332 know which context to supply to the right side.
334 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
336 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
337 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
340 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
342 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
343 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
344 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
345 that can no longer be found in the table.
347 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
349 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
350 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
351 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
352 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
355 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
357 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
359 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
361 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
362 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
363 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
364 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
365 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
366 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
368 =item Attempt to join self
370 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
371 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
372 need to move the join() to some other thread.
374 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
376 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
377 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
378 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
379 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
380 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
383 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
385 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
386 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
387 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
389 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
391 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
392 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
393 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
394 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
396 =item Bad filehandle: %s
398 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
399 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
400 did it in another package.
402 =item Bad free() ignored
404 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
405 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
406 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
408 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
409 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
410 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
415 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
417 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
419 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
420 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
423 =item Bad name after %s::
425 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
426 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
435 $sym = "mypack::$var";
437 =item Bad symbol for array
439 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
440 wasn't a symbol table entry.
442 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
444 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
445 wasn't a symbol table entry.
447 =item Bad symbol for hash
449 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
450 wasn't a symbol table entry.
452 =item Badly placed ()'s
454 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
455 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
458 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
460 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
461 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
462 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
464 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
466 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
467 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
468 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
470 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
472 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
473 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
475 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
477 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
478 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
479 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
480 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
481 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
483 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
485 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
486 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
487 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
489 =item bind() on closed fd
491 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
492 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
494 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
496 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
498 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
500 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
501 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
502 so it was truncated to the string shown.
504 =item Callback called exit
506 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
507 exited by calling exit.
509 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
511 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
512 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
513 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
514 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
516 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
518 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
519 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
521 =item Can't "last" outside a block
523 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
524 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
525 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
526 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
527 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
528 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
530 =item Can't "next" outside a block
532 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
533 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
534 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
535 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
536 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
538 =item Can't read CRTL environ
540 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
541 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
542 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
543 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
545 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
547 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
548 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
549 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
550 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
551 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
553 =item Can't bless non-reference value
555 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
556 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
558 =item Can't break at that line
560 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
561 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
564 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
566 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
567 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
568 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
570 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
572 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
573 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
574 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
575 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
577 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
579 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
580 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
581 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
582 Something like this will reproduce the error:
585 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
586 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
588 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
590 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
591 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
592 Something like this will reproduce the error:
595 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
596 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
598 =item Can't chdir to %s
600 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
601 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
603 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
605 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
607 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
609 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
610 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
620 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
622 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
624 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
625 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
627 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
629 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
630 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
632 =item Can't coerce array into hash
634 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
635 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
636 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
638 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
640 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
641 or other plumbing problems.
643 =item Can't declare %s in my
645 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
646 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
648 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
650 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
652 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
654 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
655 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
658 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
660 (S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
662 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
664 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
665 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
667 =item Can't do setegid!
669 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
672 =item Can't do seteuid!
674 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
676 =item Can't do setuid
678 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
679 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
680 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
681 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
682 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
683 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
685 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
687 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
688 without flags is emulated.
690 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
692 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
693 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
695 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
697 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
698 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
700 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
702 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
703 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
704 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
705 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
706 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
707 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
711 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
712 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
713 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
715 =item Can't execute %s
717 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
718 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
720 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
722 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
723 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
724 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
726 =item Can't find %s on PATH
728 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
731 =item Can't find label %s
733 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
734 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
736 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
738 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
739 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
740 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
742 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
744 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
745 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
746 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
750 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
752 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
754 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
755 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
756 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
757 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
758 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
759 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
760 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
761 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
762 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
763 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
764 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
765 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
766 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
767 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
769 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
771 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
772 can't retrieve its name for later use.
774 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
776 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
777 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
779 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
781 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
782 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
783 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
786 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
788 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
789 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
791 =item Can't localize through a reference
793 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
794 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
795 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
796 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
798 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
800 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
801 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
802 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
805 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
807 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
808 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
809 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
810 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
812 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
814 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
815 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
816 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
817 doing C<make install>.
819 =item Can't locate %s
821 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
822 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
823 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
824 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
825 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
826 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
829 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
831 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
832 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
833 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
835 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
837 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
840 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
842 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
844 =item Can't modify %s in %s
846 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
847 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
849 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
851 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
854 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
856 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
859 =item Can't open %s: %s
861 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
862 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
863 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
864 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
867 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
869 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
870 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
871 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
872 and then read it in under a different file handle.
874 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
876 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
877 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
878 command line for writing.
880 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
882 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
883 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
885 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
887 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
888 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
891 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
893 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
894 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
896 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
898 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
900 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
902 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
903 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
904 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
905 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
907 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
909 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
910 you don't have write permission to the directory.
912 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
914 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
915 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
917 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
919 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
922 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
924 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
925 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
927 =item Can't stat script "%s"
929 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
930 it open already. Bizarre.
932 =item Can't swap uid and euid
934 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
937 =item Can't take log of %g
939 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
940 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
941 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
942 the negative numbers.
944 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
946 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
947 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
948 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
950 =item Can't undef active subroutine
952 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
953 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
954 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
958 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
959 as the main Perl stack.
961 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
963 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
964 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
965 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
966 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
968 =item Can't upgrade to undef
970 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
971 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
972 code calling sv_upgrade.
974 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
976 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
977 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
978 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
980 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
982 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
983 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
984 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
985 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
988 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
990 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
991 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
992 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
994 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
996 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
998 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1000 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1001 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1002 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1004 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
1006 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
1007 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
1008 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
1009 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
1010 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
1012 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
1014 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1015 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1017 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1019 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1020 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1022 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1024 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1025 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1027 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1029 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1030 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1031 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1032 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1035 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1037 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1038 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1039 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1041 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1043 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1044 references can be weakened.
1046 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1048 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1049 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1050 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1052 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1054 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1055 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1057 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1059 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1060 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1061 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1063 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1065 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1067 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1069 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1070 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1071 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that the last two constructs
1072 are not currently implemented, they are placeholders for future extensions.
1074 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1076 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1077 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1078 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1079 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1080 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1082 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1084 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1085 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1086 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1087 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1088 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1090 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1092 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1094 chmod 777, $filename
1096 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1097 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1099 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1101 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1103 =item Compilation failed in require
1105 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1106 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1107 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1109 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1111 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1112 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1113 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1114 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1115 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1116 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1117 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1118 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1119 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1121 =item connect() on closed fd
1123 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1124 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1126 =item Constant is not %s reference
1128 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1129 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1130 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1131 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1132 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1134 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1136 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1137 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1140 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1142 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1143 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1146 =item constant(%s): %%^H is not localized
1148 (F) When setting compile-time-lexicalized hash %^H one should set the
1149 corresponding bit of $^H as well.
1151 =item constant(%s): %s
1153 (F) Compile-time-substitutions (such as overloaded constants and
1154 character names) were not correctly set up.
1156 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1158 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1160 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1162 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1164 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1166 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1167 expression compiler gave it.
1169 =item corrupted regexp program
1171 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1172 a valid magic number.
1174 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1176 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1177 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1178 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1179 case it indicates something else.
1181 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1183 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1184 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1185 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1187 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1189 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1190 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1191 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1193 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1195 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1196 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1197 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1199 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1201 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1203 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1205 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1206 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1210 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1211 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1213 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1215 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1216 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1217 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1218 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1219 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1220 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1221 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1222 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1225 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1227 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1229 =item do_study: out of memory
1231 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1233 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1235 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1238 =item elseif should be elsif
1240 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1241 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1242 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1243 unlikely to be what you want.
1245 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1247 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1248 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1250 =item entering effective %s failed
1252 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1253 effective uids or gids failed.
1255 =item Error converting file specification %s
1257 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1258 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1259 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1260 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1261 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1263 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1265 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1266 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1267 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1269 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1271 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1272 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1273 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1275 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1277 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1278 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1279 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1280 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1281 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1282 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1284 =item Excessively long <> operator
1286 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1287 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1288 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1289 variable and glob that.
1291 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1293 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1295 =item Exiting eval via %s
1297 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1298 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1300 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1302 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1303 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1304 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1306 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1308 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1309 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1311 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1313 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1314 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1316 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1318 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1319 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1320 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1321 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1323 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1325 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1326 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1327 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1328 the Perl source code is distressed.
1330 =item fcntl is not implemented
1332 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1333 PDP-11 or something?
1335 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1337 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1338 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1339 the FileHandle package.
1341 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1343 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1344 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1345 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1346 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1349 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1351 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1352 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1353 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1354 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1357 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1359 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1360 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1361 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1364 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1366 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1367 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1368 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1371 =item Format %s redefined
1373 (W) You redefined a format, perhaps accidentally. To suppress this warning,
1378 eval "format NAME =...";
1381 =item Format not terminated
1383 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1384 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1386 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1396 (or something like that).
1398 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1400 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1402 =item gethostent not implemented
1404 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1405 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1408 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1410 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1411 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1413 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1415 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1416 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1418 =item Glob not terminated
1420 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1421 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1422 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1423 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1425 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1427 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1428 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1429 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1431 =item goto must have label
1433 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1434 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1436 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1438 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1439 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1440 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1442 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1444 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1445 is now heavily deprecated.
1447 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1449 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1450 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1451 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1453 =item Identifier too long
1455 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1456 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1457 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1458 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1460 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1462 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1463 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1464 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1466 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1468 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1469 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1470 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1473 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1475 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1476 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1477 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1479 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1480 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1481 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1482 properly converting the text file format.
1484 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1485 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1486 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1488 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1489 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1492 =item Illegal division by zero
1494 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1495 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1497 =item Illegal modulus zero
1499 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1500 don't take to this kindly.
1502 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1504 (F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1506 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1508 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1510 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1512 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1513 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1515 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1517 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1518 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1520 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1522 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1523 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1524 before the illegal character.
1526 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1528 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1531 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1533 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1534 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1536 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1538 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1539 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1540 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1541 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1542 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1543 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1544 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1546 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1548 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1549 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1550 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1551 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1552 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1553 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1554 for more information.
1556 =item Insecure directory in %s
1558 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1559 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1562 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1564 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1565 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1566 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1567 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1568 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1570 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1572 (W) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1573 as a literal in your code or as a scalar is too big for your
1574 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1575 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1576 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1577 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1578 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1579 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1582 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1584 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1585 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1586 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1587 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1588 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1589 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1590 and execute the specified command.
1592 =item internal disaster in regexp
1594 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1596 =item glob failed (%s)
1598 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1599 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1600 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1601 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1602 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1603 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1604 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1605 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1606 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1607 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1610 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1612 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1614 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1616 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1617 greater than the maximum character, or the range didn't start/end with
1618 a literal character. See L<perlre>.
1620 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1622 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1623 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1625 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1627 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1628 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1631 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1633 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1634 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1637 =item ioctl is not implemented
1639 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1640 strange for a machine that supports C.
1642 =item junk on end of regexp
1644 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1646 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1648 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1649 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1650 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1652 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1654 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1655 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1658 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1660 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1661 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1664 =item leaving effective %s failed
1666 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1667 effective uids or gids failed.
1669 =item listen() on closed fd
1671 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1672 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1674 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1676 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1677 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1679 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1681 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1682 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1683 ended earlier on the current line.
1685 =item Misplaced _ in number
1687 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1689 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1691 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1692 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1693 one line to the next.
1695 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \C{}
1697 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\C{charname}> within
1698 double-quotish context.
1700 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1702 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1703 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1705 =item Missing command in piped open
1707 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1708 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1710 =item Missing operator before %s?
1712 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1713 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1715 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1717 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1718 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1719 you were last editing.
1721 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1723 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1724 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1725 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1727 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1730 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1732 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1734 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1735 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1738 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1740 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1741 be created for some peculiar reason.
1743 =item Module name must be constant
1745 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1747 =item msg%s not implemented
1749 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1751 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1753 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1754 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1756 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1758 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1759 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1760 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1761 provided for just this purpose.
1763 =item Negative length
1765 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1766 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1768 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1770 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1771 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1773 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1774 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1778 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1779 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1781 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1783 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1784 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1785 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1788 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1790 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1792 =item No comma allowed after %s
1794 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1795 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1796 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1798 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1799 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1800 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1801 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1802 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1803 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1804 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1805 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1806 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1807 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1808 this error was triggered?
1810 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1812 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1813 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1814 want to pipe the output from this command.
1816 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1818 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1819 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1820 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1821 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1822 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1825 =item No dbm on this machine
1827 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1828 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1830 =item No DBsub routine
1832 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1833 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1834 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1835 ordinary subroutine call.
1837 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1839 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1840 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1841 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1843 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1845 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1846 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1847 from which to read data for stdin.
1849 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1851 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1852 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1853 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1855 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1857 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1858 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1859 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1861 =item No Perl script found in input
1863 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1864 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1866 =item No setregid available
1868 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1871 =item No setreuid available
1873 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1876 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1878 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1881 =item No such array field
1883 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1884 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1885 array indices for that to work.
1887 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1889 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1890 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1891 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1892 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1894 =item No such pipe open
1896 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1897 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1898 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1900 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1902 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1903 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1905 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1907 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
1908 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1909 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1910 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1913 =item Not a CODE reference
1915 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1916 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1917 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1918 See also L<perlref>.
1920 =item Not a format reference
1922 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1923 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1925 =item Not a GLOB reference
1927 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1928 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1929 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1930 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1932 =item Not a HASH reference
1934 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1935 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1936 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1938 =item Not a perl script
1940 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1941 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1944 =item Not a SCALAR reference
1946 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1947 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1948 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1950 =item Not a subroutine reference
1952 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1953 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1954 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1955 See also L<perlref>.
1957 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
1959 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1960 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1962 =item Not an ARRAY reference
1964 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1965 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1966 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1968 =item Not enough arguments for %s
1970 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1972 =item Not enough format arguments
1974 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1977 =item Null filename used
1979 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
1980 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1982 =item Null picture in formline
1984 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1985 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1986 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1988 =item NULL OP IN RUN
1990 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1994 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1996 =item NULL regexp argument
1998 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2000 =item NULL regexp parameter
2002 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2004 =item Number too long
2006 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2007 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2008 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2009 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2011 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2013 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
2014 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
2015 on portability concerns.
2017 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2019 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2020 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2022 =item Offset outside string
2024 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2025 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2026 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2027 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2031 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2035 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2037 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2039 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2040 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2041 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2042 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2043 true. See L<overload>.
2045 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2047 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2048 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2049 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2050 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2051 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2053 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2055 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2056 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2058 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2060 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2061 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2063 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2064 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2065 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2066 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2067 error is trappable I<once>.
2069 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2071 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2072 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2073 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2074 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2076 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2078 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2079 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2080 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2084 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2087 =item panic: ck_grep
2089 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2091 =item panic: ck_split
2093 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2095 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2097 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2098 are in the savestack.
2100 =item panic: del_backref
2102 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2107 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2108 it wasn't an eval context.
2110 =item panic: do_match
2112 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2114 =item panic: do_split
2116 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2118 =item panic: do_subst
2120 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2122 =item panic: do_trans
2124 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2128 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2132 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2133 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2135 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2137 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2139 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2141 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2143 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2145 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2149 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2150 it wasn't a block context.
2152 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2154 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2156 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2158 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2159 invalid enum on the top of it.
2163 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2165 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2167 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2168 references to an object.
2170 =item panic: mapstart
2172 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2174 =item panic: null array
2176 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2178 =item panic: pad_alloc
2180 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2181 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2183 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2185 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2186 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2188 =item panic: pad_free po
2190 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2192 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2194 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2195 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2197 =item panic: pad_sv po
2199 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2201 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2203 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2204 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2206 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2208 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2210 =item panic: pp_iter
2212 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2214 =item panic: realloc
2216 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2218 =item panic: restartop
2220 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2221 didn't supply the destination.
2225 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2226 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2228 =item panic: scan_num
2230 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2232 =item panic: sv_insert
2234 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2237 =item panic: top_env
2239 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2243 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2245 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2247 (W) You said something like
2253 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2255 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2257 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2259 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2260 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2261 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2263 =item Permission denied
2265 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2267 =item pid %x not a child
2269 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2270 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2271 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2273 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2275 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2276 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2278 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2280 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2281 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2282 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2283 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2285 You probably wrote something like this:
2292 when you should have written this:
2299 If you really want comments, build your list the
2300 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2304 'b', # another comment
2307 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2309 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2310 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2311 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2314 You probably wrote something like this:
2318 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2319 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2323 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2325 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2326 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2327 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2328 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2330 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2332 (S) The old irregular construct
2336 is now misinterpreted as
2340 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2341 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2342 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2345 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2347 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2348 Check your logic flow.
2350 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2352 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2353 Check your logic flow.
2355 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2357 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2358 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2359 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2363 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2365 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2366 or defined with a different function prototype.
2368 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2370 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2371 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2372 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2373 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2375 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2377 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2378 Check your logic flow.
2380 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2382 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2384 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2386 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2387 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2388 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2390 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2392 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2393 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2395 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2397 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2398 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2400 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2402 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2403 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2404 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2405 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2407 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2408 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2409 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2410 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2412 =item Reference is already weak
2414 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2415 Doing so has no effect.
2417 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2419 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2420 reference count of other than 1.
2422 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2424 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2425 could match an empty string.
2427 =item regexp memory corruption
2429 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2430 expression compiler gave it.
2432 =item regexp out of space
2434 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2436 =item Reversed %s= operator
2438 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2439 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2441 =item Runaway format
2443 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2444 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2445 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2446 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2447 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2449 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2451 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2452 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2453 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2454 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2455 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2456 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2458 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2459 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2460 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2463 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2465 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2466 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2467 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2468 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2469 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2470 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2472 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2473 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2474 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2477 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2479 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2480 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2482 =item Search pattern not terminated
2484 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2485 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2486 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2488 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2490 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2491 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2493 =item select not implemented
2495 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2497 =item sem%s not implemented
2499 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2501 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2503 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2504 that had previously been marked as free.
2506 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2508 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2509 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2511 =item Send on closed socket
2513 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2514 Check your logic flow.
2516 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2518 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2521 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2523 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2524 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2526 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2528 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2529 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2531 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2533 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2538 Also known as "500 Server error".
2540 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2542 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2543 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2544 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2545 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2546 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2547 for more information:
2549 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2550 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2551 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2552 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2553 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2555 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2557 =item setegid() not implemented
2559 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2560 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2563 =item seteuid() not implemented
2565 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2566 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2569 =item setrgid() not implemented
2571 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2572 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2575 =item setruid() not implemented
2577 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2578 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2581 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2583 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2584 because the world might have written on it already.
2586 =item shm%s not implemented
2588 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2590 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2592 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2594 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2596 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2597 put it into the wrong package?
2599 =item sort is now a reserved word
2601 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2602 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2604 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2606 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2607 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2608 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2610 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2612 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2613 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2615 =item split /^/ better written as split /^/m
2617 (W) Implicit translation of /^/ to mean /^/m in split is deprecated.
2621 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2622 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2623 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2625 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2627 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2628 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2630 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2632 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2633 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2634 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2635 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2638 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2640 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2641 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2642 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2643 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2644 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2646 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2648 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2649 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2652 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2654 (W) You redefined a subroutine, perhaps accidentally. To suppress this
2659 eval "sub name { ... }";
2662 =item Substitution loop
2664 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2665 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2666 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2667 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2669 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2671 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2672 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2673 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2675 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2677 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2678 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2679 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2681 =item substr outside of string
2683 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2684 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2685 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2686 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2687 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2689 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2691 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2692 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2694 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2696 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2697 real and effective uids or gids.
2701 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2703 A keyword is misspelled.
2704 A semicolon is missing.
2706 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2707 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2708 A closing quote is missing.
2710 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2711 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2712 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2713 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2714 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2715 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2716 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2717 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2718 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2720 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2722 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2723 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2726 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2728 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2729 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2730 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2731 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2733 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2735 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2736 Check your logic flow.
2738 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2740 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2741 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2743 =item tell() on unopened file
2745 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2746 never opened or has since been closed.
2748 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2750 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2751 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2753 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2755 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2756 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2765 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2766 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2768 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2770 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2771 to the probings of Configure.
2773 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2775 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2776 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2777 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2778 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2781 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2783 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2784 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2785 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2787 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2789 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2791 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2792 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2793 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2794 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2795 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2796 %ENV which produced the warning.
2798 =item times not implemented
2800 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2801 you're not running on Unix.
2803 =item Too few args to syscall
2805 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2806 system call to call, silly dilly.
2808 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2810 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2811 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2812 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2813 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2816 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2817 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2818 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2819 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2821 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2822 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2824 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2826 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2827 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2828 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2834 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2835 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2838 =item Too many args to syscall
2840 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2842 =item Too many arguments for %s
2844 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2846 =item trailing \ in regexp
2848 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2851 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2853 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2854 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2855 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2857 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2859 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2862 =item truncate not implemented
2864 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2865 Configure knows about.
2867 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2869 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2870 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2871 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2872 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2874 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2876 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2877 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2879 =item umask not implemented
2881 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2882 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2884 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2886 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2888 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2890 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2891 contexts were entered and left.
2893 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2895 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2896 values were temporarily localized.
2898 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2900 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2901 were entered and left.
2903 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2905 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2906 scalars were allocated and freed.
2908 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2910 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2911 another package? See L<perlform>.
2913 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2915 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2916 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2918 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2920 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2921 has since been undefined.
2923 =item Undefined subroutine called
2925 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2926 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2928 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2930 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2931 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2933 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2935 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2936 another package? See L<perlform>.
2938 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2940 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2941 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2943 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2945 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2946 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2948 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
2950 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
2952 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
2954 (F) The second argument of 3-arguments open is not one from the list
2955 of C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>, C<+L<gt>>,
2956 C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|-> of possible open() modes.
2958 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2960 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2961 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2962 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2963 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2965 =item unmatched () in regexp
2967 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2968 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
2969 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
2971 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
2973 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
2974 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
2975 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
2976 place you were last editing.
2978 =item unmatched [] in regexp
2980 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2981 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2984 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2986 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
2987 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2988 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2990 =item Unrecognized character %s
2992 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2993 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2994 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
2996 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
2998 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3001 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3003 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3004 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3006 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3008 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3009 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3010 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3012 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3014 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3015 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3016 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3018 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3020 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3022 =item Unsupported function fork
3024 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3026 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3027 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3028 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3030 =item Unsupported function %s
3032 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3033 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3035 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3037 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3038 least that's what Configure thought.
3040 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3042 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3043 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3044 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3045 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3047 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3049 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3050 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3052 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3054 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3055 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3056 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3057 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3059 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3061 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3062 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3064 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3066 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3067 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3069 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3071 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3072 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3073 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3075 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3077 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3078 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3079 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3080 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3082 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3083 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3084 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3085 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3086 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3088 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3089 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3090 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3091 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3093 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3094 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3095 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3097 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3099 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3100 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3101 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3102 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3103 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3104 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3106 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3108 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3109 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3112 =item Use of uninitialized value
3114 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3115 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3116 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3118 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3120 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3122 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3124 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3125 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3126 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3127 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3128 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3129 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3133 when you meant to say
3135 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3137 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3138 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3143 when you should have said
3147 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3148 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3149 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3150 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3151 L<perlref> for more on this.
3153 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3155 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3156 valid when C<untie> was called.
3158 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3160 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3161 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3162 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3163 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3164 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3166 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3168 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3169 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3170 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3173 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3175 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3176 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3177 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3178 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3179 on the front of your variable.
3181 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3183 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3184 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3185 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3186 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3188 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3190 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3191 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3192 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3193 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3194 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3195 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3198 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3199 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3200 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3201 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3203 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3205 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3206 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3208 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3209 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3210 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3211 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3212 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3213 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3215 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3216 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3217 will I<never> share the given variable.
3219 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3220 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3221 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3222 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3225 =item Variable syntax
3227 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3228 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3231 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3233 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3235 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3236 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3239 are supported and installed on your system.
3240 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3242 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3243 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3244 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3245 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3246 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3247 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3248 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3249 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3250 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3252 =item Warning: something's wrong
3254 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3255 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3257 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3259 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3260 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3262 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3264 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3265 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3266 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3267 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3271 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3275 but in actual fact, you got
3279 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3281 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3283 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3284 Check your logic flow.
3286 =item X outside of string
3288 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3289 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3291 =item x outside of string
3293 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3294 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3296 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3298 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3300 =item Xsub called in sort
3302 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3304 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3306 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3307 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3308 Use a filename instead.
3310 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3312 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3313 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3314 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3315 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3317 =item You need to quote "%s"
3319 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3320 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3321 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3322 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3324 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3326 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3327 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3328 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3330 =item \1 better written as $1
3332 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3333 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3334 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3335 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3336 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3338 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3340 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3341 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3342 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3344 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3346 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3347 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3348 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3349 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3352 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3359 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3361 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3362 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3364 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3366 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3374 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3375 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3376 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3377 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3379 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3381 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3382 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3384 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3386 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3387 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3388 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3389 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"