3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
141 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
143 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
149 or a hash or array slice, such as:
151 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
152 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
154 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
156 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
157 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
160 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
162 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
163 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
164 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
166 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
168 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
169 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
170 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
171 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
172 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
173 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
175 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
177 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
178 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
180 =item assertion botched: %s
182 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
184 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
186 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
188 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
190 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
191 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
192 know which context to supply to the right side.
194 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
196 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
197 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
198 Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
199 created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
200 thread. See L<threads>.
202 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
204 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
205 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
207 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
209 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
210 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
211 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
217 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
219 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
220 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
223 bless $self, "$proto";
225 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
227 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
228 which is not in its key set.
230 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
232 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
233 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
235 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
237 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
238 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
239 outside any of those arenas.
241 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
243 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
244 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
245 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
246 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
248 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
250 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
251 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
252 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
253 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
256 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
258 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
260 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
262 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
263 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
264 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
265 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
266 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
267 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
270 =item Attempt to join self
272 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
273 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
274 to move the join() to some other thread.
276 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
278 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
279 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
280 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
281 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
282 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
285 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
287 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
288 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
289 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
291 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
294 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
296 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
297 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
298 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
300 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
302 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
303 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
304 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
305 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
307 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
309 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
310 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
311 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
313 =item Bad filehandle: %s
315 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
316 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
317 open(), or did it in another package.
319 =item Bad free() ignored
321 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
322 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
323 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
325 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
326 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
327 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
331 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
333 =item Badly placed ()'s
335 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
336 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
339 =item Bad name after %s::
341 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
342 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
351 $sym = "mypack::$var";
353 =item Bad realloc() ignored
355 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
356 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
357 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
359 =item Bad symbol for array
361 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
362 wasn't a symbol table entry.
364 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
366 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
367 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
370 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
372 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
373 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
375 =item Bad symbol for hash
377 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
378 wasn't a symbol table entry.
380 =item Bareword found in conditional
382 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
383 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
384 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
388 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
391 use constant TYPO => 1;
392 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
394 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
396 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
398 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
399 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
400 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
402 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
404 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
405 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
406 you need to predeclare a package?
408 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
410 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
411 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
414 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
416 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
417 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
418 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
419 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
420 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
422 =item \1 better written as $1
424 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
425 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
426 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
427 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
428 there are more than 9 backreferences.
430 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
432 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
433 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
434 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
436 =item bind() on closed socket %s
438 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
439 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
441 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
443 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
444 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
446 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
448 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
450 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
452 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
455 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
457 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
458 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
459 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
461 =item Callback called exit
463 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
464 exited by calling exit.
466 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
468 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
469 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
470 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
471 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
472 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
473 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
474 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
475 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
477 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
479 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
480 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
481 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
482 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
484 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
486 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
487 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
489 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
491 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
492 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
493 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
494 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
496 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
498 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
499 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
500 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
502 =item Can't bless non-reference value
504 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
505 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
507 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
509 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
510 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
512 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
514 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
516 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
518 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
519 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
520 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
522 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
524 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
525 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
526 like this will reproduce the error:
529 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
530 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
532 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
534 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
535 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
536 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
537 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
539 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
541 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
542 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
543 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
544 Something like this will reproduce the error:
547 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
548 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
550 =item Can't chdir to %s
552 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
553 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
555 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
557 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
560 =item Can't coerce array into hash
562 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
563 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
564 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
566 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
568 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
569 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
579 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
581 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
583 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
584 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
586 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
588 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
589 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
591 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
593 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
596 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
598 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
599 quotas or other plumbing problems.
601 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
603 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
604 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
605 extended for other types of variables in future.
607 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
609 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
610 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
612 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
614 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
615 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
617 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
619 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
622 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
624 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
625 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
626 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
628 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
630 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
631 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
632 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
634 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
636 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
637 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
638 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
640 =item Can't do setegid!
642 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
645 =item Can't do seteuid!
647 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
649 =item Can't do setuid
651 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
652 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
653 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
654 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
655 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
656 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
658 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
660 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
661 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
663 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
665 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
666 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
669 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
671 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
672 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
673 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
674 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
676 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
678 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
679 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
680 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
681 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
682 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
683 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
688 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
689 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
690 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
692 =item Can't execute %s
694 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
695 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
697 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
699 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
700 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
702 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
704 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
705 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
706 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
707 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
709 =item Can't find label %s
711 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
712 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
714 =item Can't find %s on PATH
716 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
719 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
721 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
722 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
723 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
725 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
727 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
728 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
729 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
731 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
733 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
734 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
735 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
737 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
739 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
740 example C<\p{Lu}> is all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
741 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
742 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
743 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
748 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
751 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
753 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
754 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
755 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
756 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
757 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
758 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
759 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
760 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
761 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
762 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
763 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
764 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
765 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
766 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
767 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
769 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
771 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
772 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
774 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
776 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
777 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
779 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
781 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
782 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
784 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
786 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
787 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
788 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
789 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
791 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
793 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
794 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
795 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
797 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
799 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
802 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
804 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
805 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
806 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
807 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
809 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
811 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
812 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
813 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
814 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
815 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
816 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
818 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
820 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
821 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
822 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
823 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
824 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
825 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
828 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
830 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
831 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
832 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
833 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
834 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
835 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
838 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
840 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
841 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
842 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
845 =item Can't localize through a reference
847 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
848 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
849 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
850 that $ref will still be a reference.
852 =item Can't locate %s
854 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
855 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
856 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
857 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
858 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
859 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
860 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
862 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
864 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
865 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
866 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
867 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
869 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
871 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
872 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
873 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
875 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
877 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
878 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
879 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
881 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
883 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
884 doesn't seem to exist.
886 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
888 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
889 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
891 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
893 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
896 =item Can't modify %s in %s
898 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
899 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
901 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
903 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
906 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
908 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
909 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
911 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
913 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
916 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
918 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
919 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
920 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
921 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
922 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
923 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
925 =item Can't open %s: %s
927 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
928 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
929 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
930 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
933 =item Can't open a reference
935 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
936 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
940 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
941 open is not supported.
943 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
945 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
946 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
947 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
948 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
950 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
952 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
953 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
954 the command line for writing.
956 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
958 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
959 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
960 command line for reading.
962 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
964 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
965 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
966 the command line for writing.
968 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
970 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
971 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
974 =item Can't open perl script%s
976 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
978 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
979 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
980 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
982 =item Can't read CRTL environ
984 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
985 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
986 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
987 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
990 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
992 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
993 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
994 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
995 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
996 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
997 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
999 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1001 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1002 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1003 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1005 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1007 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1008 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1010 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1012 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1013 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1015 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1017 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1018 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1019 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1021 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
1023 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1026 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1028 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1029 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1032 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1034 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1035 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1037 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1039 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1040 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1041 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1042 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1045 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1047 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1048 open already. Bizarre.
1050 =item Can't swap uid and euid
1052 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1055 =item Can't take log of %g
1057 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1058 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1059 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1062 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1064 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1065 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1066 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1068 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1070 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1071 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1072 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1076 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1077 as the main Perl stack.
1079 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1081 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1082 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1083 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1084 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1086 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1088 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1089 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1090 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1092 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1094 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1095 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1097 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1099 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1100 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1102 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1104 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1105 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1106 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1108 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1110 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1111 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1112 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1114 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1116 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1119 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1121 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1122 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1123 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1124 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1127 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1129 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1130 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1131 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1132 is inside a big-endian group.
1134 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1136 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1137 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1138 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1139 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1142 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1144 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1145 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1146 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1148 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1150 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1151 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1153 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1155 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1156 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1157 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1159 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1161 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1162 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1163 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1164 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1165 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1168 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1170 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1171 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1172 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1173 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1175 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1177 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1178 references can be weakened.
1180 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1182 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1183 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1184 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1186 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1192 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1193 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1194 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1198 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1201 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1207 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1208 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1211 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1213 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1219 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1220 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1221 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1223 pack("c", $x & 255);
1225 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1228 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1230 (W unpack) You tried something like
1232 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1234 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1235 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1236 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1238 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1240 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1242 (W pack) You tried something like
1244 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1246 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1247 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1248 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1250 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1252 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1254 (W unpack) You tried something like
1256 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1258 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1259 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1260 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1262 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1264 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1266 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1268 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1270 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1271 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1273 =item Code missing after '/'
1275 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1276 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1278 =item %s: Command not found
1280 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1281 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1283 =item Compilation failed in require
1285 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1286 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1287 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1289 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1291 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1292 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1293 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1294 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1295 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1296 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1297 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1298 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1299 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1301 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1303 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1304 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1305 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1306 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1307 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1308 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1309 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1312 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1314 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1315 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1316 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1317 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1318 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1319 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1320 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1323 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1325 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1326 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1327 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1329 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1331 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1332 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1333 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1334 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1337 =item Constant is not %s reference
1339 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1340 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1341 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1342 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1343 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1345 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1347 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1348 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1349 commentary and workarounds.
1351 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1353 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1354 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1357 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1359 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1360 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1362 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1364 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1366 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1368 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1369 expression compiler gave it.
1371 =item corrupted regexp program
1373 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1376 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1378 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1380 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1382 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1383 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1386 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1388 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1389 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1390 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1391 which case it indicates something else.
1393 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1395 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1396 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1397 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1399 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1401 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1402 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1403 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1405 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1407 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1408 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1410 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1412 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1413 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1414 that triggers this error.
1416 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1418 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1419 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1420 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1421 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1422 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1423 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1424 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1426 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1430 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1432 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1434 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1435 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1436 to create a dangling reference.
1438 =item Did not produce a valid header
1442 =item %s did not return a true value
1444 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1445 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1446 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1447 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1449 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1451 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1454 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1456 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1457 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1460 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1462 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1463 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1468 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1469 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1471 =item Document contains no data
1475 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1477 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1478 define a C<$VERSION.>
1480 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1482 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1483 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1485 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1487 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1489 =item do_study: out of memory
1491 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1493 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1495 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1496 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1497 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1498 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1499 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1500 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1501 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1502 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1504 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1506 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1507 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1509 =item dump is not supported
1511 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1513 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1515 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1518 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1520 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1521 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1523 =item elseif should be elsif
1525 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1526 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1527 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1528 unlikely to be what you want.
1532 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1533 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1534 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1536 =item entering effective %s failed
1538 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1539 effective uids or gids failed.
1541 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1543 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1544 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1545 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1547 =item Error converting file specification %s
1549 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1550 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1551 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1552 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1553 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1555 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1557 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1558 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1559 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1561 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1563 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1564 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1565 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1566 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1567 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1568 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1570 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1572 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1573 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1574 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1576 =item Excessively long <> operator
1578 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1579 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1580 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1581 variable and glob that.
1583 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1585 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1587 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1589 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1591 =item Exiting eval via %s
1593 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1594 goto, or a loop control statement.
1596 =item Exiting format via %s
1598 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1599 goto, or a loop control statement.
1601 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1603 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1604 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1605 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1607 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1609 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1610 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1612 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1614 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1615 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1617 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1619 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1620 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1621 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1622 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1624 =item %s: Expression syntax
1626 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1627 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1629 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1631 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1632 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1633 routines has been prematurely ended.
1635 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1637 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1638 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1639 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1640 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1641 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1643 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1645 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1646 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1647 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1648 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1650 =item fcntl is not implemented
1652 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1653 PDP-11 or something?
1655 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1657 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1658 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1659 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1662 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1664 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1665 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1666 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1667 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1669 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1671 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1672 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1673 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1674 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1675 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1676 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1678 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1680 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1681 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1684 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1686 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1687 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1689 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1691 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1692 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1693 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1696 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1698 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1699 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1700 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1703 =item Format not terminated
1705 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1706 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1708 =item Format %s redefined
1710 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1713 no warnings 'redefine';
1714 eval "format NAME =...";
1717 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1727 (or something like that).
1729 =item %s found where operator expected
1731 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1732 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1733 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1734 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1736 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1738 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1740 =item gethostent not implemented
1742 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1743 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1746 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1748 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1749 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1751 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1753 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1754 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1756 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1758 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1759 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1760 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1762 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1764 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1765 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1766 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1769 =item glob failed (%s)
1771 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1772 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1773 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1774 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1775 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1776 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1777 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1778 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1779 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1780 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1781 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1783 =item Glob not terminated
1785 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1786 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1787 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1788 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1790 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1792 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1793 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1795 =item goto must have label
1797 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1798 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1800 =item ()-group starts with a count
1802 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1803 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1804 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1806 =item %s had compilation errors
1808 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1810 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1812 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1813 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1814 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1816 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1818 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1819 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1821 =item %s has too many errors
1823 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1824 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1826 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1828 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1829 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1830 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1832 =item Identifier too long
1834 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1835 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1836 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1837 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1839 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1841 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1843 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1845 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1846 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1849 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1851 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1852 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1853 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1854 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1855 to your Perl administrator.
1857 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1859 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1860 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1862 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1864 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1865 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1867 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
1869 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
1871 =item Illegal division by zero
1873 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1874 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1877 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1879 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1880 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1881 number stopped before the illegal character.
1883 =item Illegal modulus zero
1885 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1886 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1888 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1890 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1891 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1893 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1895 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1897 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1899 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1900 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1902 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1904 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1905 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtwA]>.
1907 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1909 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1910 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1911 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1913 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1915 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1916 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1917 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1920 =item Impossible to activate assertion call
1922 (W assertions) You're calling an assertion function in a block that is
1923 not under the control of the C<assertions> pragma.
1925 =item (in cleanup) %s
1927 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1928 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1929 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1930 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1931 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1933 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1934 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1936 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1938 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1939 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1940 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1942 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1944 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1945 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1946 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1947 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1948 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1949 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1950 L<perlsec> for more information.
1952 =item Insecure directory in %s
1954 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1955 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1956 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
1959 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1961 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1962 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1963 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
1964 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
1965 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1967 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1969 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1970 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1971 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1972 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1973 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1974 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1975 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1976 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1979 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
1981 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of printf()
1982 or sprintf() are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
1983 integers for your architecture.
1985 =item Integer overflow in version
1987 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
1988 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
1989 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
1990 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
1991 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
1994 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1996 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1997 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2000 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2002 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2003 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2004 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2005 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2006 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2007 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2009 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2011 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2012 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2015 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2017 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2018 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2019 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2020 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2022 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2024 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2025 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2027 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2029 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2030 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2032 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2034 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2035 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2037 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2039 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2040 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2041 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2042 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2043 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2045 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2047 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2048 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2050 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2052 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2053 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2054 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2057 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2059 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2060 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2061 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2062 list was terminated too soon.
2064 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2066 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2067 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2068 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2071 =item Invalid version format (multiple underscores)
2073 (F) Versions may contain at most a single underscore, which signals
2074 that the version is a beta release. See L<version> for the allowed
2077 =item Invalid version format (underscores before decimal)
2079 (F) Versions may not contain decimals after the optional underscore.
2080 See L<version> for the allowed version formats.
2082 =item ioctl is not implemented
2084 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2085 strange for a machine that supports C.
2087 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2089 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2090 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2092 =item IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
2094 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2095 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2098 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2100 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2101 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2103 =item $* is no longer supported
2105 (D deprecated) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2106 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2107 C<//m> and C<//s> regexp modifiers instead.
2109 =item $# is no longer supported
2111 (D deprecated) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2112 been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2113 printf/sprintf functions instead.
2115 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2117 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2118 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2121 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2123 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2126 =item junk on end of regexp
2128 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2130 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2132 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2133 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2136 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2138 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2139 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2142 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2144 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2145 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2148 =item leaving effective %s failed
2150 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2151 effective uids or gids failed.
2153 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2155 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2156 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2157 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2159 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2161 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2162 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2165 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2167 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2168 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
2169 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2171 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2173 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2174 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2175 instead on the filehandle.)
2177 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2179 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2180 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2181 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2183 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2185 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2186 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2188 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2190 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2191 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2193 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2195 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2202 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2203 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2204 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2205 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2207 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2209 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2210 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2211 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2212 when the function is called.
2214 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2216 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8
2219 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
2220 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
2221 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
2223 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2225 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2226 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2228 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2230 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2231 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2233 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2235 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2236 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2238 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2240 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2241 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2243 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2245 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2246 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2247 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2250 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2252 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2253 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2256 =item % may not be used in pack
2258 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2259 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2260 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2262 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2264 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2265 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2267 =item Method %s not permitted
2271 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2273 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2274 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2275 ended earlier on the current line.
2277 =item Misplaced _ in number
2279 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2280 separate two digits.
2282 =item Missing argument to -%c
2284 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2285 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2287 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
2289 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2290 double-quotish context.
2292 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2294 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2295 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2297 =item Missing command in piped open
2299 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2300 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2303 =item Missing control char name in \c
2305 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2308 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2310 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2311 they have a name with which they can be found.
2313 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2315 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2316 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2317 can vary from one line to the next.
2319 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2321 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2322 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2324 =item Missing right brace on %s
2326 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2328 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2330 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2331 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2334 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2336 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2337 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2338 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2340 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2342 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2343 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2344 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2346 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2349 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2351 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2352 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2355 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2356 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2359 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2361 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2362 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2365 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2367 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2368 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2370 =item Module name must be constant
2372 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2374 =item Module name required with -%c option
2376 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2377 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2378 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2380 =item More than one argument to open
2382 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2383 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2384 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2385 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2387 =item msg%s not implemented
2389 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2391 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2393 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2394 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2396 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2398 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2399 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2400 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2402 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2404 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2407 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2409 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2410 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2411 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2413 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2415 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2416 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2417 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2418 provided for this purpose.
2420 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2421 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2422 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2423 will not trigger this warning.
2425 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2427 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2428 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2430 =item Negative length
2432 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2433 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2435 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2437 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2438 greater than or equal to zero.
2440 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2442 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2443 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2444 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2446 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2447 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2449 =item %s never introduced
2451 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2452 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2454 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2456 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2457 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2458 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2459 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2461 =item No comma allowed after %s
2463 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2464 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2465 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2467 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2468 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2469 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2470 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2471 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2472 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2473 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2474 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2475 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2476 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2477 this error was triggered?
2479 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2481 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2482 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2483 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2485 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2487 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2488 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2489 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2492 =item No dbm on this machine
2494 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2495 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2497 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2499 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2500 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2501 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2502 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2504 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2506 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2508 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2510 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2511 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2512 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2514 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2516 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2517 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2519 =item No input file after < on command line
2521 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2522 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2523 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2527 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2528 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2530 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2532 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2533 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2535 =item No output file after > on command line
2537 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2538 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2539 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2541 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2543 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2544 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2545 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2547 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2549 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2550 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2551 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2553 =item No Perl script found in input
2555 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2556 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2558 =item No setregid available
2560 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2563 =item No setreuid available
2565 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2568 =item No %s specified for -%c
2570 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2571 you haven't specified one.
2573 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2575 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2576 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2577 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2579 =item No such class %s
2581 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2582 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2584 =item No such pipe open
2586 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2587 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2588 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2590 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2592 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2593 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2594 names on your system.
2596 =item Not a CODE reference
2598 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2599 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2600 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2603 =item Not a format reference
2605 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2606 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2608 =item Not a GLOB reference
2610 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2611 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2612 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2613 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2615 =item Not a HASH reference
2617 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2618 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2619 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2621 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2623 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2624 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2625 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2627 =item Not a perl script
2629 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2630 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2633 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2635 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2636 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2637 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2639 =item Not a subroutine reference
2641 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2642 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2643 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2646 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2648 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2649 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2651 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2653 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2655 =item Not enough format arguments
2657 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2658 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2662 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2663 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2666 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2668 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2669 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2670 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2671 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2672 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2674 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
2676 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
2677 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
2678 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
2680 =item Null filename used
2682 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2683 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2685 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2687 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2690 =item Null picture in formline
2692 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2693 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2694 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2698 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2700 =item NULL regexp argument
2702 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2704 =item NULL regexp parameter
2706 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2708 =item Number too long
2710 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2711 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2712 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2713 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2716 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2718 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2719 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2722 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2724 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2725 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2726 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2728 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2730 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2732 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2733 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2735 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2737 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2738 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2740 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2742 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2743 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2745 =item Offset outside string
2747 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2748 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2749 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2750 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2752 =item %s() on unopened %s
2754 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2755 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2756 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2758 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2760 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2761 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2765 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2769 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2771 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
2773 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2774 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2775 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2776 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2778 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2780 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2781 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2782 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2783 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2786 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2788 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2789 in the current lexical scope.
2791 =item Out of memory!
2793 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2794 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2795 no option but to exit immediately.
2797 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
2798 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
2799 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
2800 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
2801 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
2803 =item Out of memory during %s extend
2805 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
2806 the largest possible memory allocation.
2808 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2810 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2811 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2812 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2813 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2815 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2817 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2818 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2821 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2822 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2823 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2824 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2825 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2826 where the failed request happened.
2828 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2830 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2831 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2832 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2834 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2836 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2837 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2840 =item '.' outside of string in pack
2842 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
2843 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
2845 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
2847 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2848 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2850 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
2852 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2853 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
2854 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2856 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2858 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2859 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2860 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2861 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2863 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
2865 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2866 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2870 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2871 page. See L<perlform>.
2875 (P) An internal error.
2877 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
2879 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
2880 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
2881 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
2882 enter this branch on this platform.
2884 =item panic: ck_grep
2886 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2888 =item panic: ck_split
2890 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2892 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2894 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2895 there are in the savestack.
2897 =item panic: del_backref
2899 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2902 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
2904 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
2905 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
2906 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
2907 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
2911 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2912 it wasn't an eval context.
2914 =item panic: do_subst
2916 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2919 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2921 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2926 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2930 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2931 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2933 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
2935 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hashes entries tried repeatedly,
2936 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
2937 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
2938 adds a new object to the hash.
2940 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2942 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2944 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2946 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2948 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2950 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2954 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2955 it wasn't a block context.
2957 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2959 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2962 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2964 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2965 invalid enum on the top of it.
2967 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2969 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2970 references to an object.
2974 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2976 =item panic: memory wrap
2978 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
2980 =item panic: pad_alloc
2982 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2983 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2985 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2987 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2988 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2990 =item panic: pad_free po
2992 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2994 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2996 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2997 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2999 =item panic: pad_sv po
3001 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3003 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3005 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3006 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3008 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3010 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3012 =item panic: pp_iter
3014 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3016 =item panic: pp_match%s
3018 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3021 =item panic: pp_split
3023 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3025 =item panic: realloc
3027 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3029 =item panic: restartop
3031 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3032 didn't supply the destination.
3036 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3037 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3039 =item panic: scan_num
3041 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3043 =item panic: sv_insert
3045 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3048 =item panic: top_env
3050 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3052 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3054 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3057 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3059 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3060 to even) byte length.
3064 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3066 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3068 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3074 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3076 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
3078 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3080 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3081 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3082 redirected it with select().)
3084 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3086 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3087 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3088 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3090 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3092 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3093 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3094 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3095 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3097 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3099 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3100 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3101 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3103 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3105 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3106 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3108 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3110 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3112 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3114 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3116 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3117 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3120 are supported and installed on your system.
3121 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3123 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3124 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3125 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3126 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3127 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3128 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3129 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3130 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3131 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3132 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3134 =item Permission denied
3136 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
3138 =item pid %x not a child
3140 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3141 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3142 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3144 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3146 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3148 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
3150 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
3151 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
3153 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3155 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3156 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3157 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3158 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3159 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3161 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3163 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3164 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3166 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3168 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3169 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3170 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3171 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3172 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3173 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3175 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3177 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3178 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3179 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3180 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3181 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3182 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3184 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3186 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3187 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3188 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3189 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3190 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3191 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3193 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3195 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3196 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3197 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3198 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3200 You probably wrote something like this:
3207 when you should have written this:
3214 If you really want comments, build your list the
3215 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3219 'b', # another comment
3222 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3224 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3225 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3226 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3229 You probably wrote something like this:
3233 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3234 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3238 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3240 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3241 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3242 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3243 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3245 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3247 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3248 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3250 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3252 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3253 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3254 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3255 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3257 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3259 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3260 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3261 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3262 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3264 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
3266 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
3270 use attrs qw(locked);
3273 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
3279 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
3280 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
3282 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3284 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3288 is now misinterpreted as
3292 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3293 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3294 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3297 =item Premature end of script headers
3301 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3303 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3304 before now. Check your control flow.
3306 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3308 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3309 before now. Check your control flow.
3311 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3313 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3314 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3315 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3316 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3319 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3321 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3322 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3324 =item Prototype not terminated
3326 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3329 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3331 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3332 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3333 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3335 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3337 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3338 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3339 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3341 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3343 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3344 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3345 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3346 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3347 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3349 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3352 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3354 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3355 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3356 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3357 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3359 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3361 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3362 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3364 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3366 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3367 before now. Check your control flow.
3369 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3371 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3373 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3375 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3377 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3379 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3381 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3383 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3386 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3388 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3389 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3390 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3392 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3394 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3395 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3397 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3399 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3400 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3403 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3405 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3406 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3407 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3408 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3410 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3411 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3412 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3413 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3415 =item Reference is already weak
3417 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3418 Doing so has no effect.
3420 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3422 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3423 a reference count of other than 1.
3425 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3427 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3428 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3429 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3430 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3432 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3435 =item regexp memory corruption
3437 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3438 expression compiler gave it.
3440 =item Regexp out of space
3442 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3445 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
3447 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
3448 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
3449 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
3451 =item Reversed %s= operator
3453 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3454 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3456 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3458 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
3459 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3461 =item Runaway format
3463 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3464 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3465 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3466 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3467 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3469 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3471 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3472 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3473 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3474 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3476 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3478 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3479 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3480 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3481 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3482 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3483 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3484 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3486 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3487 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3488 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3491 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3493 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3494 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3495 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3496 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3497 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3498 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3499 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3501 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3502 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3503 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3506 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3508 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3509 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3511 =item Search pattern not terminated
3513 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3514 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3515 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3517 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
3518 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
3519 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
3520 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
3522 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
3524 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
3527 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
3528 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
3529 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
3530 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
3532 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3534 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3535 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3537 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3539 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
3540 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3542 =item select not implemented
3544 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3546 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3548 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3549 the current implementation.
3551 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3553 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3554 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3556 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3558 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3559 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3561 =item sem%s not implemented
3563 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3565 =item send() on closed socket %s
3567 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3568 before now. Check your control flow.
3570 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3572 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3573 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3576 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3578 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3579 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3580 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3582 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3584 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3585 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3586 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3588 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3590 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3591 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3592 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3595 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3597 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3598 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3599 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3602 =item 500 Server error
3608 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3609 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3610 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3611 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3612 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3613 produce a valid header".
3615 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3617 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3618 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3619 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3620 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3621 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3622 Please see the following for more information:
3624 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3625 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3626 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3628 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3630 =item setegid() not implemented
3632 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3633 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3636 =item seteuid() not implemented
3638 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3639 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3642 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3644 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3645 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3648 =item setrgid() not implemented
3650 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3651 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3654 =item setruid() not implemented
3656 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3657 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3660 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3662 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3663 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3664 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3666 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3668 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3669 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3671 =item Setuid script not plain file
3673 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
3674 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
3676 =item shm%s not implemented
3678 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3680 =item !=~ should be !~
3682 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
3683 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
3684 operators: probably not what you intended.
3686 =item <> should be quotes
3688 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3691 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3693 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3694 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3695 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3696 probably not what you had in mind.
3698 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3700 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3703 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3705 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3706 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3708 =item sort is now a reserved word
3710 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3711 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3713 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3715 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3716 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3717 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3719 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3721 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3722 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3724 =item splice() offset past end of array
3726 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3727 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3728 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3729 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3734 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3735 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3736 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3738 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3740 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3741 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3742 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3743 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3746 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3748 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3749 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3751 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s"
3753 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3754 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3755 C<can> may break this.
3757 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3759 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3762 no warnings 'redefine';
3763 eval "sub name { ... }";
3766 =item Substitution loop
3768 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3769 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3770 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3771 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3773 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3775 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3776 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3777 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3779 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3781 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3782 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3783 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3785 =item substr outside of string
3787 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3788 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3789 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3790 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3791 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3793 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3795 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3796 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3798 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
3800 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
3801 inferior to its current type.
3803 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3805 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3806 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3807 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3808 clustering parentheses:
3810 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3812 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3813 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3815 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3817 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3818 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3819 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3821 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3823 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3824 and effective uids or gids.
3828 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3832 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3834 A keyword is misspelled.
3835 A semicolon is missing.
3837 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3838 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3839 A closing quote is missing.
3841 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3842 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3843 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3844 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3845 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3846 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3847 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3848 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3849 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3852 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3854 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3855 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3858 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3860 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3861 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3862 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3864 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
3866 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3868 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
3870 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3872 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3874 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3875 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3876 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3877 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3879 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3881 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3882 before now. Check your control flow.
3884 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
3886 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
3887 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
3889 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3891 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3892 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3894 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3896 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3897 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3899 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3901 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
3902 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3904 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3906 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3907 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3916 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3917 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3919 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3921 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3922 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3923 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3924 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3927 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3929 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3930 to the probings of Configure.
3932 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3934 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3935 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3936 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3939 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
3941 (F) Currently this attribute is not supported on C<my> or C<sub>
3942 declarations. See L<perlfunc/our>.
3944 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3946 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3948 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3949 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3950 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3951 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3952 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3953 target of the change to
3954 %ENV which produced the warning.
3956 =item thread failed to start: %s
3958 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
3960 =item times not implemented
3962 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3963 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3965 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
3967 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3968 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3969 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3970 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3973 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3974 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3975 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3976 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3978 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3979 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3981 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
3983 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
3984 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
3985 specified an illegal mapping.
3986 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
3988 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
3990 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
3992 =item Too few args to syscall
3994 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3995 system call to call, silly dilly.
3997 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3999 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4000 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option. This is an error because those options
4001 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4003 =item Too late to run %s block
4005 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4006 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4007 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4008 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4011 =item Too many args to syscall
4013 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4015 =item Too many arguments for %s
4017 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4021 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4022 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4026 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4027 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4029 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4031 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4032 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4034 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4036 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4037 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4038 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4040 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4042 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4043 y/// or y[][] construct.
4045 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4047 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4048 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4050 =item truncate not implemented
4052 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4053 Configure knows about.
4055 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4057 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4058 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4059 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4060 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4062 =item umask not implemented
4064 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4065 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4067 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4069 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4071 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4073 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4074 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4076 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4078 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4079 many values were temporarily localized.
4081 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4083 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4084 many blocks were entered and left.
4086 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4088 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4089 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4091 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4093 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4094 another package? See L<perlform>.
4096 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4098 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4099 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4101 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4103 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4104 since been undefined.
4106 =item Undefined subroutine called
4108 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4109 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4111 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4113 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4114 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4116 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4118 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4119 another package? See L<perlform>.
4121 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4123 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4124 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4127 =item %s: Undefined variable
4129 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4130 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4132 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4134 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4135 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4137 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
4139 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
4140 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
4141 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4143 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4145 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4148 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4150 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4151 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4152 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4154 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4156 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4157 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4158 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4159 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4160 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4161 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4163 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4165 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4166 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4167 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4168 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4170 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4172 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4174 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4176 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4177 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4178 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4179 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4180 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4183 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4184 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4186 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4188 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4189 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4191 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4193 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4194 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4196 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4198 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4199 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4201 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4202 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4205 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4207 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4208 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4209 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4210 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4212 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4214 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4215 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4216 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4217 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4219 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4221 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4222 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4223 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4224 you were last editing.
4226 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4228 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4229 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4230 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4233 =item Unrecognized character %s
4235 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4236 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
4237 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4239 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
4241 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4242 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4243 understood literally.
4245 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
4247 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4250 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4252 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4253 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
4254 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
4255 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4256 escape was discovered.
4258 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4260 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4261 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4264 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4266 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4267 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4268 bad switch on your behalf.)
4270 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4272 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4273 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4274 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4276 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4278 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4280 =item Unsupported function %s
4282 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4283 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4285 =item Unsupported function fork
4287 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4289 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4290 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4291 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4293 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4295 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4296 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4298 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4300 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4301 least that's what Configure thought.
4303 =item Unterminated attribute list
4305 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4306 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4307 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4308 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4310 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4312 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4313 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4314 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4315 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4317 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4319 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4320 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4321 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4323 =item Unterminated <> operator
4325 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4326 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4327 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4328 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4330 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4332 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4333 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4335 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4337 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4338 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4340 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4342 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4343 See L<Win32> for more information.
4345 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4347 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4348 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4350 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4354 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4356 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4357 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4359 =item Useless localization of %s
4361 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4362 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4363 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4365 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4367 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4368 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4370 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4374 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4376 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4377 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4379 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4381 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4382 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4383 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4384 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4385 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4386 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4391 when you meant to say
4393 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4395 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4396 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4401 when you should have said
4405 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
4406 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
4407 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
4408 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
4409 L<perlref> for more on this.
4411 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
4412 since they are often used in statements like
4414 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
4416 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
4419 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
4421 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
4423 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
4425 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
4429 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
4431 =item Useless use of %s with no values
4433 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
4434 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
4435 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
4436 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
4437 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
4438 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
4440 =item "use" not allowed in expression
4442 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
4443 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
4445 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4447 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
4448 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4450 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4452 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4453 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4454 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4457 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4458 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4460 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4462 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4463 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4465 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4467 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4468 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4469 used. (This may change in the future.)
4471 =item Use of freed value in iteration
4473 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
4474 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
4477 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
4479 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
4480 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
4481 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
4482 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
4484 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4486 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4487 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4489 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4491 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4492 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4493 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4495 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4497 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4498 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4499 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4501 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4503 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4504 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4505 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4506 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4509 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4510 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4511 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4512 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4515 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4516 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4517 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4518 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4521 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4522 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4523 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4525 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4527 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4528 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4530 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4532 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4533 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4534 old way has bad side effects.
4536 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4538 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4539 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4540 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4542 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4544 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4545 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4546 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4549 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4551 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4552 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4553 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4555 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4556 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4557 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4558 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4560 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4562 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4563 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4564 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4565 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4566 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4567 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4569 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4571 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4572 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4573 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4574 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4576 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4578 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4579 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4580 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4582 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
4583 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
4584 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
4585 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
4586 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
4587 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
4588 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
4589 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
4591 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4593 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4594 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4595 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4596 be removed in a future version.
4598 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4600 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4601 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4602 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4603 removed in a future version.
4605 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4607 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4608 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4609 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4610 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4611 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4612 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4613 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4615 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4617 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4618 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4619 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4620 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4621 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4622 C<defined> operator.
4624 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4626 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4627 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4628 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4631 =item Variable "%s" is not available
4633 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
4634 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
4635 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
4636 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
4637 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
4638 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
4640 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
4642 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
4643 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
4644 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
4645 now been created and is live:
4647 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
4649 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
4650 gone out of scope, for example,
4658 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
4659 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
4661 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4663 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4664 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4665 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4666 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4667 front of your variable.
4669 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4671 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4672 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4673 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4675 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4677 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4678 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4679 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4680 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4681 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4683 =item Variable syntax
4685 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4686 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4689 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4691 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4692 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
4694 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
4695 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4696 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4697 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4698 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4699 variable will no longer be shared.
4701 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4702 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4703 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
4704 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4706 =item Version number must be a constant number
4708 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4709 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4712 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
4714 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
4717 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4719 (W portable) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4720 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4721 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4722 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4723 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4724 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4727 =item Warning: something's wrong
4729 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4730 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4732 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4734 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4735 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4738 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4740 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4741 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4742 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4743 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4747 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4751 but in actual fact, you got
4755 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4757 =item Wide character in %s
4759 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4760 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
4761 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
4762 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
4763 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
4764 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
4765 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4767 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
4769 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
4770 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
4771 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
4772 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
4774 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4776 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4777 before now. Check your control flow.
4779 =item %s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
4781 When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
4782 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
4783 this encoding, for example
4785 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
4787 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
4789 =item 'X' outside of string
4791 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
4792 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4794 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
4796 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4797 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4799 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4801 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4802 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4803 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4806 =item You need to quote "%s"
4808 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4809 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4810 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4811 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4812 what you want, put an & in front.)
4814 =item Your random numbers are not that random
4816 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
4817 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
4818 Something Very Wrong.