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>.
21 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
24 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
25 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
26 The symbols C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
30 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
32 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
33 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
34 if you want to localize a package variable.
36 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
38 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
39 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
40 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
41 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
44 =item "no" not allowed in expression
46 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
47 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
49 =item "use" not allowed in expression
51 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
52 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
54 =item % may only be used in unpack
56 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
57 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
58 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
60 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
62 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
63 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
64 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
66 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
68 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
73 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
75 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
80 or a hash slice, such as
82 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
83 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
85 =item %s did not return a true value
87 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
88 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
89 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
90 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
92 =item %s found where operator expected
94 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
95 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
96 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
97 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
99 =item %s had compilation errors
101 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
103 =item %s has too many errors
105 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
106 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
108 =item %s matches null string many times
110 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
111 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
113 =item %s never introduced
115 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
116 before it could possibly have been used.
120 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
122 =item %s: Command not found
124 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
125 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
128 =item %s: Expression syntax
130 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
131 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
134 =item %s: Undefined variable
136 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
137 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
142 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
143 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
146 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
148 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
149 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
150 the previous line just because you saw this message.
152 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
154 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
155 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
157 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
159 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
160 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
162 =item C<-p> destination: %s
164 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
165 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
166 redirected it with select().)
168 =item 500 Server error
172 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
174 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
175 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
177 =item @ outside of string
179 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
180 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
182 =item accept() on closed fd
184 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
185 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
187 =item Allocation too large: %lx
189 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
191 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
193 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
194 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
195 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
196 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
197 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
198 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
200 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
202 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
204 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
206 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
207 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
208 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
210 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
212 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
213 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
214 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
217 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
218 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
219 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
220 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
222 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
223 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
224 to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
226 =item Args must match #! line
228 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
229 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
230 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
231 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
233 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
235 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
236 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
237 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
239 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
241 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
242 is now heavily deprecated.
244 =item assertion botched: %s
246 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
248 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
250 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
252 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
254 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
255 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
256 know which context to supply to the right side.
258 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
260 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
261 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
264 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
266 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
267 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
268 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
269 that can no longer be found in the table.
271 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
273 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
274 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
275 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
276 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
279 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
281 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
283 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
285 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
286 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
287 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
288 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
289 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
290 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
292 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
294 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
295 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
296 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
297 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
298 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
301 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
303 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
304 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
305 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
307 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
309 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
310 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
311 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
312 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
314 =item Bad filehandle: %s
316 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
317 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
318 did it in another package.
320 =item Bad free() ignored
322 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
323 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
324 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
326 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
327 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
328 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
333 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
335 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
337 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
338 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
341 =item Bad name after %s::
343 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
344 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
353 $sym = "mypack::$var";
355 =item Bad symbol for array
357 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
358 wasn't a symbol table entry.
360 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
362 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
363 wasn't a symbol table entry.
365 =item Bad symbol for hash
367 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
368 wasn't a symbol table entry.
370 =item Badly placed ()'s
372 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
373 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
376 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
378 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
379 subroutine identifier, in curly braces or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
380 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
382 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
384 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
385 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
386 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
388 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
390 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
391 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
393 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
395 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
396 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
397 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
398 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
399 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
401 =item bind() on closed fd
403 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
404 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
406 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
408 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
410 =item Callback called exit
412 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
413 exited by calling exit.
415 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
417 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
418 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
419 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
420 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
422 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
424 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
425 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
427 =item Can't "last" outside a block
429 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
430 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
431 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
432 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
433 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
434 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
436 =item Can't "next" outside a block
438 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
439 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
440 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
441 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
442 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
444 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
446 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
447 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
448 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
449 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
450 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
452 =item Can't bless non-reference value
454 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
455 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
457 =item Can't break at that line
459 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
460 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
463 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
465 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
466 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
467 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
469 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
471 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
472 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
473 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
474 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
476 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
478 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
479 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
480 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
481 Something like this will reproduce the error:
484 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
485 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
487 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
489 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
490 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
491 Something like this will reproduce the error:
494 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
495 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
497 =item Can't chdir to %s
499 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
500 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
502 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
504 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
505 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
515 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
517 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
519 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
520 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
522 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
524 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
525 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
527 =item Can't coerce array into hash
529 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
530 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
531 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
533 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
535 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
536 or other plumbing problems.
538 =item Can't declare %s in my
540 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
541 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
543 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
545 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
547 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
549 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
550 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
553 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
555 (S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
557 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
559 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
560 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
562 =item Can't do setegid!
564 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
567 =item Can't do seteuid!
569 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
571 =item Can't do setuid
573 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
574 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
575 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
576 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
577 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
578 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
580 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
582 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
583 without flags is emulated.
585 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
587 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
588 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
590 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
592 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
593 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
595 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
597 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
598 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
599 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
600 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
601 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
602 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
606 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
607 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
608 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
610 =item Can't execute %s
612 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
613 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
615 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
617 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
618 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
619 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
621 =item Can't find %s on PATH
623 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
626 =item Can't find label %s
628 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
629 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
631 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
633 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
634 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
635 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
637 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
639 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
640 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
641 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
645 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
647 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
649 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
650 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
651 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
652 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
653 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
654 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
655 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
656 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
657 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
658 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
659 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
660 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
661 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
662 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
664 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
666 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
667 can't retrieve its name for later use.
669 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
671 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
672 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
674 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
676 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
677 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
678 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
681 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
683 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
684 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
686 =item Can't localize through a reference
688 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
689 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
690 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
691 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
693 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
695 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
696 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
697 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
700 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
702 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
703 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
704 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
705 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
707 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
709 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
710 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
711 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
712 doing C<make install>.
714 =item Can't locate %s in @INC
716 (F) You said to do (or require, or use) a file that couldn't be found
717 in any of the libraries mentioned in @INC. Perhaps you need to set the
718 PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra library
719 is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or maybe
720 you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>.
722 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
724 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
725 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
726 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
728 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
730 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
733 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
735 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
737 =item Can't modify %s in %s
739 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
740 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
742 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
744 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
747 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
749 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
752 =item Can't open %s: %s
754 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
755 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
756 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
757 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
760 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
762 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
763 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
764 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
765 and then read it in under a different file handle.
767 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
769 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
770 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
771 command line for writing.
773 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
775 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
776 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
778 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
780 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
781 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
784 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
786 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
787 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
789 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
791 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
793 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
795 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
796 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
797 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
798 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
800 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
802 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
803 you don't have write permission to the directory.
805 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
807 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
808 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
810 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
812 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
815 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
817 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
818 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
820 =item Can't stat script "%s"
822 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
823 it open already. Bizarre.
825 =item Can't swap uid and euid
827 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
830 =item Can't take log of %g
832 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
833 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
834 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
835 the negative numbers.
837 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
839 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
840 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
841 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
843 =item Can't undef active subroutine
845 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
846 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
847 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
851 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
852 as the main Perl stack.
854 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
856 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
857 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
858 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
859 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
861 =item Can't upgrade to undef
863 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
864 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
865 code calling sv_upgrade.
867 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
869 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
870 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
871 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
873 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
875 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
876 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
877 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
878 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
881 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
883 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
885 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
887 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
888 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
889 test the type of the reference, if need be.
891 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
893 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
894 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
895 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
896 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
897 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
899 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
901 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
902 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
904 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
906 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
907 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
909 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
911 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
912 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
914 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
916 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
917 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
918 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
919 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
922 =item Can't use subscript on %s
924 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
925 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
926 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
928 =item Can't x= to read-only value
930 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
931 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
932 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
934 =item Cannot find an opnumber for "%s"
936 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
937 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
939 =item Cannot resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
941 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
942 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
943 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
945 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
947 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
948 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
949 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
950 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
951 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
953 =item Character class syntax [: :] is reserved for future extensions
955 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
956 with "[:" and ending with ":]" is reserved for future extensions.
957 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
958 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
959 backslash: "\[:" and ":\]".
961 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
963 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
964 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
965 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
966 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
967 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
969 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
971 (W) A novice will sometimes say
975 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
976 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
978 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
980 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
982 =item Compilation failed in require
984 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
985 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
986 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
988 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
990 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
991 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
992 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
993 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
994 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
995 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
996 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
997 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
998 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1000 =item connect() on closed fd
1002 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1003 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1005 =item Constant is not %s reference
1007 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1008 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1009 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1010 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1011 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1013 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1015 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1016 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1019 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1021 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1022 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1025 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1027 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1029 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1031 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1033 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1035 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1036 expression compiler gave it.
1038 =item corrupted regexp program
1040 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1041 a valid magic number.
1043 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1045 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1046 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1047 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1048 case it indicates something else.
1050 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1052 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1053 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1054 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1056 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1058 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1060 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1062 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1063 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1067 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1068 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1070 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1072 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1073 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1074 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1075 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1076 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1077 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1078 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1079 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1082 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1084 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1086 =item do_study: out of memory
1088 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1090 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1092 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1095 =item elseif should be elsif
1097 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1098 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1099 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1100 unlikely to be what you want.
1102 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1104 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1105 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1107 =item entering effective %s failed
1109 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1110 effective uids or gids failed.
1112 =item Error converting file specification %s
1114 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1115 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1116 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1117 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1118 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1120 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1122 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1123 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1124 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1126 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1128 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1129 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1130 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1132 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1134 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1135 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1136 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1137 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1138 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1139 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1141 =item Excessively long <> operator
1143 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1144 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1145 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1146 variable and glob that.
1148 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1150 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1152 =item Exiting eval via %s
1154 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1155 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1157 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1159 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1160 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1161 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1163 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1165 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1166 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1168 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1170 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1171 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1173 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1175 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1176 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1177 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1178 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1180 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1182 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1183 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1184 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1185 the Perl source code is distressed.
1187 =item fcntl is not implemented
1189 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1190 PDP-11 or something?
1192 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1194 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1195 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1196 the FileHandle package.
1198 =item Filehandle %s opened for only input
1200 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1201 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1202 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1203 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1206 =item Filehandle opened for only input
1208 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1209 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1210 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1211 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1214 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1216 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1217 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1218 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1221 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1223 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1224 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1225 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1228 =item Format %s redefined
1230 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1234 eval "format NAME =...";
1237 =item Format not terminated
1239 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1240 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1242 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1252 (or something like that).
1254 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1256 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1258 =item gethostent not implemented
1260 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1261 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1264 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1266 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1267 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1269 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1271 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1272 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1274 =item Glob not terminated
1276 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1277 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1278 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1279 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1281 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1283 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1284 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1285 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1287 =item goto must have label
1289 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1290 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1292 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1294 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1295 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1296 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1298 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1300 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1301 is now heavily deprecated.
1303 =item Identifier too long
1305 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1306 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1307 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1308 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1310 =item Ill-formed logical name |%s| in prime_env_iter
1312 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. A logical name was encountered when preparing
1313 to iterate over %ENV which violates the syntactic rules governing logical
1314 names. Because it cannot be translated normally, it is skipped, and will not
1315 appear in %ENV. This may be a benign occurrence, as some software packages
1316 might directly modify logical name tables and introduce nonstandard names,
1317 or it may indicate that a logical name table has been corrupted.
1319 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1321 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1322 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1323 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1325 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1326 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1327 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1328 properly converting the text file format.
1330 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1331 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1332 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1334 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1335 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1338 =item Illegal division by zero
1340 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1341 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1343 =item Illegal modulus zero
1345 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1346 don't take to this kindly.
1348 =item Illegal octal digit
1350 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1352 =item Illegal octal digit ignored
1354 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1355 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1357 =item Illegal hex digit ignored
1359 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F in a
1360 hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1361 before the illegal character.
1363 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1365 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1366 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1368 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1370 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1371 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1372 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1373 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1374 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1375 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1376 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1378 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1380 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1381 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1382 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1383 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1384 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1385 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1386 for more information.
1388 =item Insecure directory in %s
1390 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1391 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1394 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1396 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1397 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1398 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1399 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1400 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1402 =item Integer overflow in hex number
1404 (S) The literal hex number you have specified is too big for your
1405 architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest hex literal is
1408 =item Integer overflow in octal number
1410 (S) The literal octal number you have specified is too big for your
1411 architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest octal literal is
1414 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1416 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1417 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1418 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1419 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/exec>). Somehow, this count
1420 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1421 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1422 and execute the specified command.
1424 =item internal disaster in regexp
1426 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1428 =item glob failed (%s)
1430 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1431 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1432 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1433 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1434 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1435 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1436 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1437 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1438 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1439 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1442 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1444 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1446 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1448 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1449 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1451 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1453 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1454 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1456 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1458 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1459 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1462 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1464 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1465 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1468 =item ioctl is not implemented
1470 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1471 strange for a machine that supports C.
1473 =item junk on end of regexp
1475 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1477 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1479 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1480 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1481 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1483 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1485 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1486 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1489 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1491 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1492 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1495 =item leaving effective %s failed
1497 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1498 effective uids or gids failed.
1500 =item listen() on closed fd
1502 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1503 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1505 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1507 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1508 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1510 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1512 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1513 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1514 ended earlier on the current line.
1516 =item Misplaced _ in number
1518 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1520 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1522 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1523 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1524 one line to the next.
1526 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1528 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1529 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1531 =item Missing operator before %s?
1533 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1534 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1536 =item Missing right bracket
1538 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly brackets (braces) than closing ones.
1539 As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you were last
1542 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1544 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1545 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1546 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1548 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1551 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1553 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1555 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1556 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1559 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1561 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1562 be created for some peculiar reason.
1564 =item Module name must be constant
1566 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1568 =item msg%s not implemented
1570 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1572 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1574 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1575 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1577 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1579 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1580 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1581 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1582 provided for just this purpose.
1584 =item Negative length
1586 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1587 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1589 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1591 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1592 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1594 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1595 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1599 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1600 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1602 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1604 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1605 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1606 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1609 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1611 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1613 =item No comma allowed after %s
1615 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1616 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1617 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1619 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1620 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1621 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1622 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1623 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1624 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1625 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1626 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1627 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1628 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1629 this error was triggered?
1631 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1633 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1634 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1635 want to pipe the output from this command.
1637 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1639 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1640 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1641 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1642 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1643 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1646 =item No dbm on this machine
1648 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1649 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1651 =item No DBsub routine
1653 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1654 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1655 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1656 ordinary subroutine call.
1658 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1660 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1661 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1662 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1664 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1666 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1667 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1668 from which to read data for stdin.
1670 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1672 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1673 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1674 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1676 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1678 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1679 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1680 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1682 =item No Perl script found in input
1684 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1685 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1687 =item No setregid available
1689 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1692 =item No setreuid available
1694 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1697 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1699 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1702 =item No such array field
1704 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1705 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1706 array indices for that to work.
1708 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1710 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1711 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1712 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1713 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1715 =item No such pipe open
1717 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1718 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1719 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1721 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1723 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1724 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1726 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1728 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Per was unable to find the local
1729 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1730 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1731 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1734 =item Not a CODE reference
1736 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1737 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1738 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1739 See also L<perlref>.
1741 =item Not a format reference
1743 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1744 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1746 =item Not a GLOB reference
1748 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1749 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1750 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1751 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1753 =item Not a HASH reference
1755 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1756 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1757 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1759 =item Not a perl script
1761 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1762 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1765 =item Not a SCALAR reference
1767 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1768 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1769 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1771 =item Not a subroutine reference
1773 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1774 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1775 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1776 See also L<perlref>.
1778 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
1780 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1781 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1783 =item Not an ARRAY reference
1785 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1786 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1787 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1789 =item Not enough arguments for %s
1791 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1793 =item Not enough format arguments
1795 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1798 =item Null filename used
1800 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
1801 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1803 =item Null picture in formline
1805 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1806 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1807 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1809 =item NULL OP IN RUN
1811 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1815 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1817 =item NULL regexp argument
1819 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
1821 =item NULL regexp parameter
1823 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1825 =item Number too long
1827 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1828 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1829 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1830 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1832 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
1834 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
1835 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
1837 =item Offset outside string
1839 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
1840 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
1841 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
1842 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
1846 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1850 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1852 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
1854 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
1855 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
1856 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
1857 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
1858 true. See L<overload>.
1860 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
1862 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
1863 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
1864 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
1865 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
1866 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
1868 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
1870 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
1871 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
1873 =item Out of memory during request for %s
1875 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1876 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
1878 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
1879 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
1880 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
1881 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
1882 error is trappable I<once>.
1884 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
1886 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1887 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
1888 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
1889 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
1891 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
1893 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
1894 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
1895 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
1899 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
1902 =item panic: ck_grep
1904 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
1906 =item panic: ck_split
1908 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
1910 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
1912 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
1913 are in the savestack.
1917 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
1918 it wasn't an eval context.
1920 =item panic: do_match
1922 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1924 =item panic: do_split
1926 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
1928 =item panic: do_subst
1930 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1932 =item panic: do_trans
1934 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1938 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
1942 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
1943 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
1945 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
1947 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
1949 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
1951 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
1955 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
1956 it wasn't a block context.
1958 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
1960 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
1962 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
1964 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
1965 invalid enum on the top of it.
1969 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
1971 =item panic: mapstart
1973 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
1975 =item panic: null array
1977 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
1979 =item panic: pad_alloc
1981 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1982 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1984 =item panic: pad_free curpad
1986 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1987 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1989 =item panic: pad_free po
1991 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
1993 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
1995 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1996 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1998 =item panic: pad_sv po
2000 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2002 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2004 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2005 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2007 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2009 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2011 =item panic: pp_iter
2013 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2015 =item panic: realloc
2017 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2019 =item panic: restartop
2021 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2022 didn't supply the destination.
2026 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2027 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2029 =item panic: scan_num
2031 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2033 =item panic: sv_insert
2035 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2038 =item panic: top_env
2040 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2044 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2046 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2048 (W) You said something like
2054 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2056 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2058 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2060 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2061 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2062 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2064 =item Permission denied
2066 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2068 =item pid %x not a child
2070 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2071 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2072 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2074 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2076 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2077 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2079 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2081 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2082 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2083 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2084 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2086 You probably wrote something like this:
2093 when you should have written this:
2100 If you really want comments, build your list the
2101 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2105 'b', # another comment
2108 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2110 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2111 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2112 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2115 You probably wrote something like this:
2119 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2120 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2124 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2126 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2127 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2128 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2129 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2131 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2133 (S) The old irregular construct
2137 is now misinterpreted as
2141 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2142 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2143 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2146 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2148 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2149 Check your logic flow.
2151 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2153 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2154 Check your logic flow.
2156 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2158 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2159 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2160 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2164 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2166 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2167 or defined with a different function prototype.
2169 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2171 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2172 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2173 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2174 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2176 =item Read on closed filehandle E<lt>%sE<gt>
2178 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2179 Check your logic flow.
2181 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2183 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2185 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2187 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2188 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2189 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2191 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2193 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2194 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2196 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2198 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2199 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2201 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2203 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2204 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2205 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2206 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2208 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2209 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2210 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2211 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2213 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2215 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2216 reference count of other than 1.
2218 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2220 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2221 could match an empty string.
2223 =item regexp memory corruption
2225 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2226 expression compiler gave it.
2228 =item regexp out of space
2230 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2232 =item regexp too big
2234 (F) The current implementation of regular expressions uses shorts as
2235 address offsets within a string. Unfortunately this means that if
2236 the regular expression compiles to longer than 32767, it'll blow up.
2237 Usually when you want a regular expression this big, there is a better
2238 way to do it with multiple statements. See L<perlre>.
2240 =item Reversed %s= operator
2242 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2243 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2245 =item Runaway format
2247 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2248 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2249 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2250 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2251 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2253 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2255 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2256 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2257 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2258 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2259 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2260 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2262 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2263 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2264 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2267 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2269 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2270 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2271 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2272 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2273 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2274 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2276 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2277 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2278 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2281 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2283 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2284 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2286 =item Search pattern not terminated
2288 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2289 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2290 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2292 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2294 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2295 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2297 =item select not implemented
2299 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2301 =item sem%s not implemented
2303 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2305 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2307 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2308 that had previously been marked as free.
2310 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2312 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2313 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2315 =item Send on closed socket
2317 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2318 Check your logic flow.
2320 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2322 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2325 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2327 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2328 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2330 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2332 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2333 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2335 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2337 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2342 Also known as "500 Server error".
2344 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2346 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2347 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2348 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2349 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2350 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2351 for more information:
2353 http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/idiots-guide.html
2354 http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/perl-cgi-faq.html
2355 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2356 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2357 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2359 =item setegid() not implemented
2361 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2362 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2365 =item seteuid() not implemented
2367 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2368 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2371 =item setrgid() not implemented
2373 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2374 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2377 =item setruid() not implemented
2379 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2380 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2383 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2385 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2386 because the world might have written on it already.
2388 =item shm%s not implemented
2390 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2392 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2394 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2396 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2398 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2399 put it into the wrong package?
2401 =item sort is now a reserved word
2403 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2404 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2406 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2408 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2409 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2410 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2412 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2414 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2415 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2419 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2420 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2421 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2423 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2425 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2426 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2428 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2430 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2431 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2432 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2433 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2436 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2438 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2439 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2440 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2441 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2442 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2444 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2446 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2447 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2450 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2452 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2456 eval "sub name { ... }";
2459 =item Substitution loop
2461 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2462 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2463 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2464 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2466 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2468 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2469 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2470 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2472 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2474 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2475 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2476 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2478 =item substr outside of string
2480 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2481 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2482 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2483 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2484 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2486 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2488 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2489 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2491 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2493 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2494 real and effective uids or gids.
2498 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2500 A keyword is misspelled.
2501 A semicolon is missing.
2503 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2504 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2505 A closing quote is missing.
2507 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2508 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2509 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2510 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2511 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2512 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2513 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2514 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2515 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2517 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2519 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2520 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2523 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2525 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2526 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2527 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2528 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2530 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2532 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2533 Check your logic flow.
2535 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2537 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2538 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2540 =item tell() on unopened file
2542 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2543 never opened or has since been closed.
2545 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2547 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2548 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2550 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2552 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2553 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2562 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2563 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2565 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2567 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2568 to the probings of Configure.
2570 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2572 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2573 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2574 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2575 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2578 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2580 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2581 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2582 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2584 =item times not implemented
2586 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2587 you're not running on Unix.
2589 =item Too few args to syscall
2591 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2592 system call to call, silly dilly.
2594 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2596 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2597 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2598 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2599 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2602 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2603 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2604 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2605 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2607 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2608 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2610 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2612 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2613 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2614 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2620 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2621 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2624 =item Too many args to syscall
2626 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2628 =item Too many arguments for %s
2630 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2632 =item trailing \ in regexp
2634 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2637 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2639 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2640 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2641 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2643 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2645 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2648 =item truncate not implemented
2650 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2651 Configure knows about.
2653 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2655 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2656 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2657 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2658 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2660 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2662 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2663 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2665 =item umask not implemented
2667 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2668 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2670 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2672 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2674 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2676 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2677 contexts were entered and left.
2679 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2681 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2682 values were temporarily localized.
2684 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2686 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2687 were entered and left.
2689 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2691 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2692 scalars were allocated and freed.
2694 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2696 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2697 another package? See L<perlform>.
2699 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2701 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2702 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2704 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2706 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2707 has since been undefined.
2709 =item Undefined subroutine called
2711 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2712 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2714 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2716 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2717 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2719 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2721 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2722 another package? See L<perlform>.
2724 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2726 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2727 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2729 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2731 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2732 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2734 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
2736 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
2738 =item unmatched () in regexp
2740 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2741 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
2742 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
2744 =item Unmatched right bracket
2746 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly brackets (braces) than opening
2747 ones, so you're probably missing an opening bracket. As a general
2748 rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place you were
2751 =item unmatched [] in regexp
2753 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2754 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2757 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2759 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
2760 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2761 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2763 =item Unrecognized character %s
2765 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2766 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2767 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
2769 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2771 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2772 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2774 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
2776 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2777 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
2778 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
2780 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
2782 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
2783 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
2784 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
2786 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
2788 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
2790 =item Unsupported function fork
2792 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
2794 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
2795 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
2796 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
2798 =item Unsupported function %s
2800 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
2801 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
2803 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
2805 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
2806 least that's what Configure thought.
2808 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
2810 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2811 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
2812 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
2813 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2815 =item Use of $# is deprecated
2817 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
2818 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
2820 =item Use of $* is deprecated
2822 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
2823 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
2824 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
2825 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
2827 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
2829 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
2830 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
2832 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
2834 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
2835 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
2837 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
2839 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
2840 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
2841 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
2843 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
2845 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
2846 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
2847 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
2848 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
2850 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
2851 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
2852 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
2853 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
2854 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
2856 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
2857 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
2858 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
2859 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
2861 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
2862 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
2863 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
2865 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
2867 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
2868 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
2869 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
2870 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
2871 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
2872 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
2874 =item Use of %s is deprecated
2876 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
2877 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
2880 =item Use of uninitialized value
2882 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
2883 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
2884 warning assign an initial value to your variables.
2886 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
2888 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
2890 =item Useless use of %s in void context
2892 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
2893 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
2894 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
2895 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
2896 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
2897 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
2901 when you meant to say
2903 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
2905 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
2906 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
2911 when you should have said
2915 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
2916 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
2917 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
2918 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
2919 L<perlref> for more on this.
2921 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
2923 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
2924 valid when C<untie> was called.
2926 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
2928 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
2929 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
2930 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
2931 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
2932 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
2934 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
2936 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
2937 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
2938 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
2939 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
2940 on the front of your variable.
2942 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
2944 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
2945 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
2946 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
2947 the outermost subroutine. For example:
2949 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
2951 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
2952 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
2953 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
2954 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
2955 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
2956 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
2959 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
2960 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
2961 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
2962 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
2964 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
2966 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
2967 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
2969 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
2970 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
2971 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
2972 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
2973 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
2974 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
2976 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
2977 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
2978 will I<never> share the given variable.
2980 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
2981 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
2982 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
2983 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
2986 =item Variable syntax
2988 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2989 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2992 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2994 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2996 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2997 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3000 are supported and installed on your system.
3001 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3003 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3004 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3005 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3006 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3007 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3008 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3009 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3010 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3011 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3013 =item Warning: something's wrong
3015 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3016 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3018 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3020 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3021 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3023 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3025 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3026 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3027 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3028 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3032 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3036 but in actual fact, you got
3040 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3042 =item Write on closed filehandle
3044 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3045 Check your logic flow.
3047 =item X outside of string
3049 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3050 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3052 =item x outside of string
3054 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3055 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3057 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3059 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3061 =item Xsub called in sort
3063 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3065 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3067 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3068 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3069 Use a filename instead.
3071 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3073 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3074 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3075 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3076 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3078 =item You need to quote "%s"
3080 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3081 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3082 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3083 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3085 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3087 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3088 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3089 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3091 =item \1 better written as $1
3093 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3094 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3095 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3096 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3097 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3099 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3101 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3102 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3103 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3105 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3107 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3108 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3109 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3110 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3113 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3120 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3122 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3123 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3125 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3127 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3135 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3136 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3137 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3138 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3140 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3142 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3143 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3145 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3147 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3148 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3149 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3150 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"