1 //depot/perl/pod/perldiag.pod#272 - edit change 14824 (text)
4 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
8 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
11 (W) A warning (optional).
12 (D) A deprecation (optional).
13 (S) A severe warning (default).
14 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
15 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
16 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
17 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
19 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
20 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
22 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
23 category is included with the classification letter in the description
26 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
27 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
28 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
29 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
31 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
32 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
34 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
35 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
36 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
39 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
40 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
41 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
42 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
43 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
48 =item accept() on closed socket %s
50 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
51 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
54 =item Allocation too large: %lx
56 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
58 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
60 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
63 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
65 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
66 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
67 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
68 subroutine is not imported.
70 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
71 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
72 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
73 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
75 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
76 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
77 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
80 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
82 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
83 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
84 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
85 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
87 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
89 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
90 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
91 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
93 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
95 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
96 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
97 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
99 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
101 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
102 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
103 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
104 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
105 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
107 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
114 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
116 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
117 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
118 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
119 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
120 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
121 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
124 =item Args must match #! line
126 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
127 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
128 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
129 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
131 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
133 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
135 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
137 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
142 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
144 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
150 or a hash or array slice, such as:
152 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
153 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
155 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
157 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
158 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
161 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
163 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
164 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
165 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
167 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
169 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
170 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
172 =item assertion botched: %s
174 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
176 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
178 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
180 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
182 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
183 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
184 know which context to supply to the right side.
186 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a fixed hash
188 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
189 the current set of allowed keys of a fixed hash.
191 =item Attempt to clear a fixed hash
193 (F) It is currently not allowed to clear a fixed hash, even if the
194 new hash would contain the same keys as before. This may change in
197 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a fixed hash
199 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
200 declared readonly from a fixed hash.
202 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a fixed hash
204 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a fixed hash a key which
205 is not in its key set.
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 free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
227 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
228 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
229 outside any of those arenas.
231 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
233 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
234 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
235 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
236 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
238 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
240 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
241 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
242 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
243 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
246 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
248 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
250 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
252 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
253 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
254 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
255 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
256 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
257 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
260 =item Attempt to join self
262 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
263 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
264 to move the join() to some other thread.
266 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
268 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
269 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
270 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
271 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
272 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
275 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
277 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
278 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
279 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
281 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
283 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
284 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
285 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
286 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
288 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
290 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
291 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
292 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
294 =item Bad filehandle: %s
296 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
297 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
298 open(), or did it in another package.
300 =item Bad free() ignored
302 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
303 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
304 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
306 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
307 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
308 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
312 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
314 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
316 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
317 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
320 =item Badly placed ()'s
322 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
323 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
326 =item Bad name after %s::
328 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
329 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
338 $sym = "mypack::$var";
340 =item Bad realloc() ignored
342 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
343 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
344 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
346 =item Bad symbol for array
348 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
349 wasn't a symbol table entry.
351 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
353 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
354 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
356 =item Bad symbol for hash
358 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
359 wasn't a symbol table entry.
361 =item Bareword found in conditional
363 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
364 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
365 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
369 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
372 use constant TYPO => 1;
373 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
375 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
377 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
379 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
380 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
381 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
383 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
385 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
386 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
387 you need to predeclare a package?
389 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
391 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
392 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
395 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
397 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
398 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
399 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
400 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
401 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
403 =item \1 better written as $1
405 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
406 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
407 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
408 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
409 there are more than 9 backreferences.
411 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
413 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
414 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
415 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
417 =item bind() on closed socket %s
419 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
420 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
422 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
424 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
425 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
427 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
429 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
431 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
433 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
436 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
438 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
439 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
441 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
443 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
444 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
445 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
447 =item Callback called exit
449 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
450 exited by calling exit.
452 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
454 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
455 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
456 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
457 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
458 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
459 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
460 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
461 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
463 =item / cannot take a count
465 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
466 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
469 =item Can't bless non-reference value
471 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
472 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
474 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
476 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
477 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
478 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
480 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
482 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
483 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
484 like this will reproduce the error:
487 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
488 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
490 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
492 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
493 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
494 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
495 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
497 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
499 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
500 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
501 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
502 Something like this will reproduce the error:
505 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
506 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
508 =item Can't chdir to %s
510 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
511 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
513 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
515 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
518 =item Can't coerce array into hash
520 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
521 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
522 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
524 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
526 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
527 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
537 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
539 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
541 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
542 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
544 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
546 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
547 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
549 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
551 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
552 quotas or other plumbing problems.
554 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
556 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
557 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
558 extended for other types of variables in future.
560 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
562 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
563 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
565 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
567 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
568 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
570 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
572 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
575 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
577 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
578 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
579 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
581 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
583 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
584 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
585 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
587 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
589 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
590 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
591 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
593 =item Can't do setegid!
595 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
598 =item Can't do seteuid!
600 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
602 =item Can't do setuid
604 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
605 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
606 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
607 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
608 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
609 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
611 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
613 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
614 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
616 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
618 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
619 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
622 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
624 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
625 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
626 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
627 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
628 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
629 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
634 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
635 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
636 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
638 =item Can't execute %s
640 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
641 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
643 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
645 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
646 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
648 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
650 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
651 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
652 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
653 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
655 =item Can't find label %s
657 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
658 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
660 =item Can't find %s on PATH
662 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
665 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
667 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
668 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
669 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
671 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
673 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
674 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
675 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
677 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
679 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
680 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
681 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
683 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
685 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property for
686 example \p{Lu} is all uppercase letters. if you did mean to use a
687 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
688 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
689 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
694 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
697 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
699 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
700 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
701 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
702 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
703 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
704 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
705 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
706 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
707 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
708 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
709 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
710 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
711 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
712 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
713 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
715 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
717 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
718 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
720 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
722 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
723 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
725 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
727 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
728 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
730 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
732 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
733 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
734 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
735 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
737 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
739 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
740 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
741 probably don't want to.)
743 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
745 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
746 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
747 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
748 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
750 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
752 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
753 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
754 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
755 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
756 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
757 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
759 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
761 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
762 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
763 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
764 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
765 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
766 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
769 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
771 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
772 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
773 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
776 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
778 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
779 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
780 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
781 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
783 =item Can't localize through a reference
785 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
786 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
787 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
788 that $ref will still be a reference.
790 =item Can't locate %s
792 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
793 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
794 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
795 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
796 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
797 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
798 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
800 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
802 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
803 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
804 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
805 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
807 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
809 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
810 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
811 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
813 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
815 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
816 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
817 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
819 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
821 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
822 doesn't seem to exist.
824 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
826 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
829 =item Can't modify %s in %s
831 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
832 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
834 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
836 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
839 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
841 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
842 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
844 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
846 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
849 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
851 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
852 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
853 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
854 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
855 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
856 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
858 =item Can't open %s: %s
860 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
861 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
862 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
863 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
866 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
868 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
869 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
870 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
871 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
873 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
875 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
876 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
877 the command line for writing.
879 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
881 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
882 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
883 command line for reading.
885 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
887 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
888 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
889 the command line for writing.
891 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
893 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
894 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
897 =item Can't open perl script%s: %s
899 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
901 =item Can't read CRTL environ
903 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
904 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
905 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
906 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
909 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
911 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
912 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
913 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
914 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
916 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
918 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart 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()
921 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
922 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
923 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
925 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
927 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
928 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
929 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
931 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
933 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
934 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
936 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
938 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
939 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
941 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
943 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
944 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
945 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
947 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
949 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
952 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
954 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
955 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
958 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
960 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
961 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
962 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
963 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
966 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
968 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
969 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
971 =item Can't stat script "%s"
973 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
974 open already. Bizarre.
976 =item Can't swap uid and euid
978 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
981 =item Can't take log of %g
983 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
984 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
985 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
988 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
990 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
991 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
992 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
994 =item Can't undef active subroutine
996 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
997 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
998 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1002 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1003 as the main Perl stack.
1005 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1007 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1008 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1009 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1010 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1012 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1014 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1015 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1018 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1020 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1021 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1023 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1025 (P) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1026 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1027 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1029 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1031 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1032 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1034 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1036 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1037 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1038 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1040 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1042 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1045 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1047 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1048 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1049 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1050 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1053 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1055 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1056 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1057 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1058 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1061 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1063 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1064 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1065 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1067 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1069 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1070 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1072 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1074 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1075 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1076 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1078 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1080 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1081 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1082 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1083 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1084 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1087 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1089 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1090 references can be weakened.
1092 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1094 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1095 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1096 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1098 =item Character in "C" format wrapped
1104 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1105 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1106 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1110 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1113 =item Character in "c" format wrapped
1119 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1120 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1121 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1123 pack("c", $x & 255);
1125 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1128 =item Cleanup skipped %d active threads
1130 (W) When using threaded Perl, the main thread exited while there were
1131 still other threads running. This is not a good sign: you should
1132 either explicitly join the threads, or somehow be certain that all
1133 the non-main threads have finished. See L<threads>.
1135 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1137 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1139 =item %s: Command not found
1141 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1142 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1144 =item Compilation failed in require
1146 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1147 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1148 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1150 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1152 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1153 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1154 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1155 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1156 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1157 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1158 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1159 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1160 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1162 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1164 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1165 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1166 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1168 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1170 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1171 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1172 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1173 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1176 =item Constant is not %s reference
1178 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1179 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1180 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1181 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1182 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1184 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1186 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1187 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1188 commentary and workarounds.
1190 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1192 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1193 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1196 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1198 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1199 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1201 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1203 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1205 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1207 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1208 expression compiler gave it.
1210 =item corrupted regexp program
1212 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1215 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1217 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1219 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1221 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1222 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1223 redirected it with select().)
1225 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1227 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1228 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1230 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1232 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1233 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1234 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1235 which case it indicates something else.
1237 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1239 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1240 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1241 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1243 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1245 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1246 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1247 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1249 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1251 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1252 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1254 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1256 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1257 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1258 that triggers this error.
1260 =item Did not produce a valid header
1264 =item %s did not return a true value
1266 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1267 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1268 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1269 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1271 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1273 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1276 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1278 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1279 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1282 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1284 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1285 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1290 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1291 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1293 =item Document contains no data
1297 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1299 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1300 define a C<$VERSION.>
1302 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1304 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1306 =item do_study: out of memory
1308 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1310 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1312 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1313 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1314 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1315 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1316 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1317 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1318 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1319 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1321 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1323 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1324 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1326 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1328 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1331 =item elseif should be elsif
1333 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1334 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1335 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1336 unlikely to be what you want.
1340 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1341 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1342 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1344 =item entering effective %s failed
1346 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1347 effective uids or gids failed.
1349 =item Error converting file specification %s
1351 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1352 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1353 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1354 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1355 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1357 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1359 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1360 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1361 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1363 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1365 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1366 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1367 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1368 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1369 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1370 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1372 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1374 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1375 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1376 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1378 =item Excessively long <> operator
1380 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1381 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1382 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1383 variable and glob that.
1385 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1387 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1389 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1391 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1393 =item Exiting eval via %s
1395 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1396 goto, or a loop control statement.
1398 =item Exiting format via %s
1400 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1401 goto, or a loop control statement.
1403 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1405 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1406 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1407 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1409 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1411 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1412 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1414 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1416 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1417 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1419 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1421 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1422 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1423 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1424 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1426 =item %s: Expression syntax
1428 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1429 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1431 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1433 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1434 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1435 routines has been prematurely ended.
1437 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1439 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1440 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1441 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1442 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1443 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1445 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1447 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1448 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1449 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1450 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1452 =item fcntl is not implemented
1454 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1455 PDP-11 or something?
1457 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1459 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1460 to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1461 or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1462 the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1464 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1466 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1467 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1468 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1469 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1471 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1473 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1474 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1475 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1478 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1480 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1481 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1482 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1485 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1487 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1488 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1489 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1492 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex;
1494 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1496 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
1497 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
1498 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1500 =item Format not terminated
1502 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1503 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1505 =item Format %s redefined
1507 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1510 no warnings 'redefine';
1511 eval "format NAME =...";
1514 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1524 (or something like that).
1526 =item %s found where operator expected
1528 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1529 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1530 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1531 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1533 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1535 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1537 =item gethostent not implemented
1539 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1540 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1543 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1545 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1546 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1548 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1550 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1551 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1553 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1555 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1556 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1557 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1559 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1561 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1562 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1563 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1566 =item glob failed (%s)
1568 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1569 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1570 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1571 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1572 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1573 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1574 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1575 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1576 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1577 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1578 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1580 =item Glob not terminated
1582 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1583 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1584 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1585 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1587 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1589 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1590 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1592 =item goto must have label
1594 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1595 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1597 =item %s-group starts with a count
1599 (F) In pack/unpack a ()-group started with a count. A count is
1600 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1602 =item %s had compilation errors
1604 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1606 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1608 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1609 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1610 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1612 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1614 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1615 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1617 =item %s has too many errors
1619 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1620 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1622 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1624 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1625 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1626 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1628 =item Identifier too long
1630 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1631 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1632 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1633 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1635 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1637 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1639 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1641 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1642 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1645 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1647 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1648 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1649 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1650 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1651 to your Perl administrator.
1653 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1655 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1656 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1658 =item Illegal division by zero
1660 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1661 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1664 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1666 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1667 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1668 number stopped before the illegal character.
1670 =item Illegal modulus zero
1672 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1673 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1675 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1677 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1678 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1680 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1682 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1684 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1686 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1687 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1689 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1691 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1692 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1694 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1696 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1697 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1698 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1700 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1702 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1703 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1704 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1707 =item (in cleanup) %s
1709 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1710 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1711 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1712 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1713 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1715 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1716 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1718 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1720 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1721 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1722 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1724 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1726 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1727 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1728 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1729 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1730 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1731 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1732 L<perlsec> for more information.
1734 =item Insecure directory in %s
1736 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1737 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1738 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1740 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1742 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1743 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1744 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1745 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1746 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1748 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1750 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1751 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1752 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1753 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1754 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1755 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1756 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1757 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1760 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1762 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1763 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1766 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1768 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1769 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1770 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1771 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1772 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1773 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1775 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1777 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1778 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1781 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1783 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1784 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1785 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1786 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1788 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1790 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1791 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1793 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1795 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1796 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1798 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1800 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1801 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1803 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1805 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1806 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1807 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1808 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1809 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1811 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator
1813 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1814 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1816 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1818 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1819 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1820 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1823 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1825 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1826 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1829 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1831 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1833 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1836 =item ioctl is not implemented
1838 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1839 strange for a machine that supports C.
1841 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1843 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1844 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1846 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1848 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1849 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1851 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1853 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1854 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1857 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1859 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1862 =item junk on end of regexp
1864 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1866 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1868 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1869 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1872 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1874 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1875 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1878 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1880 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1881 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1884 =item leaving effective %s failed
1886 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1887 effective uids or gids failed.
1889 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1891 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1892 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1895 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1897 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1898 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1899 instead on the filehandle.)
1901 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1903 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1904 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1905 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1907 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex;
1909 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1911 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1912 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1913 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1915 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1917 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1924 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1925 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1926 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1927 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
1929 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
1931 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
1932 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
1933 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
1934 when the function is called.
1936 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
1938 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
1940 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
1941 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
1942 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
1944 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
1946 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
1947 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
1949 =item %s matches null string many times in regex;
1951 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1953 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1954 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
1955 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1958 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
1960 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
1961 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
1964 =item % may only be used in unpack
1966 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1967 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1968 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1970 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1972 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1973 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1975 =item Method %s not permitted
1979 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1981 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1982 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1983 ended earlier on the current line.
1985 =item Misplaced _ in number
1987 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
1988 separate two digits.
1990 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1992 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1993 double-quotish context.
1995 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1997 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1998 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2000 =item Missing command in piped open
2002 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2003 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2006 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2008 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2009 they have a name with which they can be found.
2011 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2013 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2014 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2015 can vary from one line to the next.
2017 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2019 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2020 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2022 =item Missing right brace on %s
2024 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2026 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2028 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2029 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2032 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2034 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2035 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2036 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2038 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2040 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2041 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2042 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2044 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2047 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2049 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2050 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2053 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2054 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2057 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2059 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2060 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2063 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2065 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2066 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2068 =item Module name must be constant
2070 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2072 =item Module name required with -%c option
2074 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2075 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2076 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2078 =item More than one argument to open
2080 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2081 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2082 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2083 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2085 =item msg%s not implemented
2087 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2089 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2091 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2092 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2094 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
2096 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2097 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2098 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2100 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
2102 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
2103 must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
2104 of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2106 =item / must follow a numeric type
2108 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
2109 follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2111 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2113 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2116 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2118 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2119 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2120 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2122 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2124 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2125 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2126 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2127 provided for this purpose.
2129 =item Negative length
2131 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2132 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2134 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2136 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2137 greater than or equal to zero.
2139 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2141 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2142 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2143 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2145 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2146 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2148 =item %s never introduced
2150 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2151 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2153 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2155 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2156 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2157 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2158 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2160 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2162 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2164 =item No comma allowed after %s
2166 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2167 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2168 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2170 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2171 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2172 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2173 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2174 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2175 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2176 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2177 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2178 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2179 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2180 this error was triggered?
2182 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2184 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2185 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2186 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2188 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2190 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2191 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2192 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2193 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2194 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2196 =item No dbm on this machine
2198 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2199 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2201 =item No DBsub routine
2203 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2204 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2205 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2206 ordinary subroutine call.
2208 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2210 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2211 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2212 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2214 =item No input file after < on command line
2216 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2217 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2218 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2222 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2223 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2225 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2227 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2228 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2230 =item No output file after > on command line
2232 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2233 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2234 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2236 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2238 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2239 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2240 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2242 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2244 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2245 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2246 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2248 =item No Perl script found in input
2250 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2251 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2253 =item No setregid available
2255 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2258 =item No setreuid available
2260 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2263 =item No space allowed after -%c
2265 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2266 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2268 =item No %s specified for -%c
2270 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2271 you haven't specified one.
2273 =item No such class %s
2275 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2276 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2278 =item No such pipe open
2280 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2281 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2282 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2284 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2286 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2287 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2288 array indices for that to work.
2290 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2292 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2293 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2294 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2295 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2297 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2299 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2300 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2301 names on your system.
2303 =item Not a CODE reference
2305 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2306 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2307 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2310 =item Not a format reference
2312 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2313 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2315 =item Not a GLOB reference
2317 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2318 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2319 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2320 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2322 =item Not a HASH reference
2324 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2325 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2326 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2328 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2330 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2331 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2332 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2334 =item Not a perl script
2336 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2337 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2340 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2342 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2343 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2344 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2346 =item Not a subroutine reference
2348 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2349 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2350 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2353 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2355 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2356 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2358 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2360 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2362 =item Not enough format arguments
2364 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2365 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2369 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2370 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2373 =item %s not allowed in length fields
2375 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
2376 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes. Redesign
2379 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2381 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2382 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2383 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2384 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2385 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2387 =item Null filename used
2389 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2390 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2392 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2394 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2397 =item Null picture in formline
2399 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2400 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2401 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2405 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2407 =item NULL regexp argument
2409 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2411 =item NULL regexp parameter
2413 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2415 =item Number too long
2417 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2418 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2419 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2420 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2423 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2425 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2426 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2429 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2431 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2432 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2433 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2435 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2437 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2439 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2440 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2442 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2444 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2445 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2447 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2449 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2450 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2452 =item Offset outside string
2454 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2455 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2456 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2457 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2459 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2461 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2462 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2464 =item %s() on unopened %s
2466 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2467 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2468 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2472 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2476 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2478 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2480 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2481 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2482 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2483 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2485 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2487 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2488 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2489 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2490 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2493 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2495 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2496 in the current lexical scope.
2498 =item Out of memory!
2500 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2501 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2502 no option but to exit immediately.
2504 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2506 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2507 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2508 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2509 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2511 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2513 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2514 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2517 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2518 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2519 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2520 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2521 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2522 where the failed request happened.
2524 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2526 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2527 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2528 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2530 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2532 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2533 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2536 =item @ outside of string
2538 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2539 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2541 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2543 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2544 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2545 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2546 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2550 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2551 page. See L<perlform>.
2555 (P) An internal error.
2557 =item panic: ck_grep
2559 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2561 =item panic: ck_split
2563 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2565 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2567 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2568 there are in the savestack.
2570 =item panic: del_backref
2572 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2577 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2578 it wasn't an eval context.
2580 =item panic: pp_match%s
2582 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2585 =item panic: do_subst
2587 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2590 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2592 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2597 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2601 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2602 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2604 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2606 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2608 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2610 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2612 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2614 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2618 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2619 it wasn't a block context.
2621 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2623 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2626 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2628 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2629 invalid enum on the top of it.
2631 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2633 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2634 references to an object.
2638 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2640 =item panic: mapstart
2642 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2644 =item panic: null array
2646 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2648 =item panic: pad_alloc
2650 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2651 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2653 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2655 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2656 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2658 =item panic: pad_free po
2660 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2662 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2664 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2665 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2667 =item panic: pad_sv po
2669 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2671 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2673 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2674 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2676 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2678 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2680 =item panic: pp_iter
2682 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2684 =item panic: pp_split
2686 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2688 =item panic: realloc
2690 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2692 =item panic: restartop
2694 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2695 didn't supply the destination.
2699 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2700 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2702 =item panic: scan_num
2704 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2706 =item panic: sv_insert
2708 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2711 =item panic: top_env
2713 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2717 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2719 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2721 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2722 to even) byte length.
2724 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2726 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2732 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2734 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2736 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2738 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2739 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2740 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2742 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2744 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2745 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2747 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2749 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2751 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2752 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2755 are supported and installed on your system.
2756 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2758 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2759 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2760 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2761 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2762 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2763 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2764 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2765 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2766 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2767 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2769 =item perlio: argument list not closed for layer "%s"
2771 (S) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you forgot
2772 the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
2773 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
2774 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
2775 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
2776 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2778 =item perlio: invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2780 (S) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2781 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2782 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2783 list was terminated too soon.
2785 =item perlio: unknown layer "%s"
2787 (S) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
2788 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
2789 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
2790 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
2791 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
2792 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2794 =item Permission denied
2796 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2798 =item pid %x not a child
2800 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2801 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2802 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2804 =item P must have an explicit size
2806 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2808 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex;
2810 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2812 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2813 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2814 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2815 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2816 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2817 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2819 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2821 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2823 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2824 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2825 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2826 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2827 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2828 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2830 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2832 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2834 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2835 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2836 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2837 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2838 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2839 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2841 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex;
2843 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2845 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2846 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2847 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2848 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2849 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2851 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2853 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2854 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2856 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2858 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2859 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2860 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2861 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2863 You probably wrote something like this:
2870 when you should have written this:
2877 If you really want comments, build your list the
2878 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2882 'b', # another comment
2885 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2887 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2888 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2889 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2892 You probably wrote something like this:
2896 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2897 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2901 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2903 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2904 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2905 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2906 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2908 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
2910 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
2911 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
2912 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
2913 to the array you apparently lost track of.
2915 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2917 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2918 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2920 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2922 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
2926 use attrs qw(locked);
2929 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2935 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2936 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2938 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2940 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2944 is now misinterpreted as
2948 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2949 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2950 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2953 =item Premature end of script headers
2957 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2959 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
2960 before now. Check your control flow.
2962 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2964 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
2965 before now. Check your control flow.
2967 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2969 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2970 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2971 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2972 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2975 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2977 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2978 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
2980 =item Prototype not terminated
2982 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
2985 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex;
2987 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2989 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
2990 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
2991 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2993 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression;
2995 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2997 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2998 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
2999 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3000 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3001 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3003 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3006 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3008 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3009 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3010 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3011 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3013 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3015 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3016 before now. Check your control flow.
3018 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3020 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3022 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3024 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3027 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3029 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3030 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3031 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3033 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3035 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3036 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3038 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3040 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3041 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3044 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3046 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3047 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3048 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3049 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3051 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3052 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3053 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3054 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3056 =item Reference is already weak
3058 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3059 Doing so has no effect.
3061 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3063 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3064 a reference count of other than 1.
3066 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex;
3068 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3070 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3071 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3072 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3073 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3075 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3078 =item regexp memory corruption
3080 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3081 expression compiler gave it.
3083 =item Regexp out of space
3085 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3088 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
3090 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3091 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3093 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
3095 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3096 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3098 =item Reversed %s= operator
3100 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3101 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3103 =item Runaway format
3105 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3106 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3107 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3108 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3109 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3111 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3113 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3114 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3115 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3116 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3117 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3118 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3119 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3121 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3122 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3123 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3126 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3128 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3129 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3130 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3131 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3132 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3133 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3134 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3136 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3137 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3138 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3141 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3143 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3144 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3145 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3146 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3148 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3150 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3151 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3153 =item Search pattern not terminated
3155 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3156 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3157 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3159 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3161 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3162 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3164 =item select not implemented
3166 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3168 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3170 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3171 the current implementation.
3173 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3175 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3176 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3178 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3180 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3181 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3183 =item sem%s not implemented
3185 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3187 =item send() on closed socket %s
3189 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3190 before now. Check your control flow.
3192 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3194 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3195 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3198 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex;
3200 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3202 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3203 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3204 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3207 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex;
3209 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3211 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3212 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3213 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3215 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex;
3217 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3219 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3220 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3221 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3223 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex;
3225 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3227 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3228 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3229 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3232 =item 500 Server error
3238 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3239 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3240 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3241 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3242 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3243 produce a valid header".
3245 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3247 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3248 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3249 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3250 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3251 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3252 Please see the following for more information:
3254 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3255 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3256 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3258 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3260 =item setegid() not implemented
3262 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3263 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3266 =item seteuid() not implemented
3268 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3269 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3272 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3274 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3275 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3278 =item setrgid() not implemented
3280 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3281 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3284 =item setruid() not implemented
3286 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3287 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3290 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3292 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3293 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3294 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3296 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3298 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3299 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3301 =item shm%s not implemented
3303 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3305 =item <> should be quotes
3307 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3310 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3312 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3313 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3314 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3315 probably not what you had in mind.
3317 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3319 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3322 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3324 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3325 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3327 =item sort is now a reserved word
3329 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3330 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3332 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3334 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3335 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3336 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3338 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3340 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3341 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3343 =item splice() offset past end of array
3345 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3346 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3347 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3348 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3353 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3354 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3355 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3357 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3359 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3360 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3361 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3362 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3365 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3367 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3368 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3370 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3372 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3373 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3374 C<can> may break this.
3376 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3378 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3381 no warnings 'redefine';
3382 eval "sub name { ... }";
3385 =item Substitution loop
3387 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3388 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3389 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3390 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3392 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3394 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3395 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3396 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3398 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3400 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3401 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3402 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3404 =item substr outside of string
3406 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3407 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3408 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3409 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3410 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3412 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3414 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3415 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3417 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex;
3419 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3421 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3422 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3423 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3424 clustering parentheses:
3426 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3428 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3429 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3431 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex;
3433 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3435 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3436 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3437 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3439 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3441 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3442 and effective uids or gids.
3446 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3448 A keyword is misspelled.
3449 A semicolon is missing.
3451 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3452 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3453 A closing quote is missing.
3455 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3456 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3457 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3458 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3459 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3460 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3461 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3462 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3463 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3466 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3468 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3469 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3472 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3474 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3475 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3476 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3480 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3482 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3484 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3485 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3486 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3487 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3489 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3491 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3492 before now. Check your control flow.
3494 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3496 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3497 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3499 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3501 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3502 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3504 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3506 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3507 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3516 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3517 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3519 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3521 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3522 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3523 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3524 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3527 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3529 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3530 to the probings of Configure.
3532 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3534 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3535 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3536 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3539 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3541 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3543 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3544 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3545 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3546 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3547 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3548 target of the change to
3549 %ENV which produced the warning.
3551 =item times not implemented
3553 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3554 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3556 =item Too few args to syscall
3558 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3559 system call to call, silly dilly.
3561 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3563 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3564 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3565 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3566 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3569 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3570 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3571 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3572 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3574 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3575 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3577 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3579 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3580 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3581 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3583 =item Too late to run %s block
3585 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3586 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3587 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3588 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3591 =item Too many args to syscall
3593 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3595 =item Too many arguments for %s
3597 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3603 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3604 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3606 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3608 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3609 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3611 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3613 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3614 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3615 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3617 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3619 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3622 =item truncate not implemented
3624 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3625 Configure knows about.
3627 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3629 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3630 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3631 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3632 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3634 =item umask not implemented
3636 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3637 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3639 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3641 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3643 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3645 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3646 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3648 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3650 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3651 many values were temporarily localized.
3653 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3655 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3656 many blocks were entered and left.
3658 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3660 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3661 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3663 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3665 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3666 another package? See L<perlform>.
3668 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3670 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3671 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3673 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3675 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3676 since been undefined.
3678 =item Undefined subroutine called
3680 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3681 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3683 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3685 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3686 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3688 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3690 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3691 another package? See L<perlform>.
3693 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3695 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3696 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3699 =item %s: Undefined variable
3701 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3702 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3704 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3706 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3707 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3709 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3711 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3712 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3713 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3715 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3717 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3720 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3722 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3724 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex;
3726 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3728 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3729 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3730 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3731 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3732 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3735 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3736 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3738 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3740 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3741 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3742 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3744 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3746 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3747 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3748 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3749 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3751 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3753 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
3754 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
3756 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
3757 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
3760 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3762 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3763 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3764 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3765 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3767 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3769 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3770 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3771 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3772 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3774 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3776 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3777 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3778 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3779 you were last editing.
3781 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3783 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3784 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3785 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3788 =item Unrecognized character %s
3790 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3791 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3792 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3794 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3796 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3797 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3798 understood literally.
3800 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex;
3802 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3804 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3805 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3806 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
3807 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3808 escape was discovered.
3810 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3812 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3815 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3817 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3818 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3821 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3823 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3824 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3825 bad switch on your behalf.)
3827 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3829 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3830 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3831 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3833 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3835 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3837 =item Unsupported function %s
3839 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3840 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3842 =item Unsupported function fork
3844 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3846 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3847 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3848 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3850 =item Unsupported script encoding
3852 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
3853 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
3855 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3857 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3858 least that's what Configure thought.
3860 =item Unterminated attribute list
3862 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3863 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3864 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3865 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
3867 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3869 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3870 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3871 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3872 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3874 =item Unterminated compressed integer
3876 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3877 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3878 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3880 =item Unterminated <> operator
3882 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3883 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3884 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3885 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3887 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3889 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3890 still valid when C<untie> was called.
3892 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex;
3894 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3896 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
3897 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
3899 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
3903 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
3905 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3906 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3908 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex;
3910 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3912 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
3913 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
3915 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
3919 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
3921 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3922 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3924 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3926 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3927 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3928 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3929 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3930 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3931 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3936 when you meant to say
3938 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3940 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3941 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3946 when you should have said
3950 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3951 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3952 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3953 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3954 L<perlref> for more on this.
3956 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
3957 since they are often used in statements like
3959 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
3961 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
3964 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3966 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3968 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
3970 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
3974 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
3976 =item Useless use of %s with no values
3978 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
3979 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
3980 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
3981 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
3982 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
3983 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
3985 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3987 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3988 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3990 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3992 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3993 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3995 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
3997 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
3998 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4000 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4002 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4003 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4004 used. (This may change in the future.)
4006 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4008 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4009 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4010 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4012 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4014 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4015 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4017 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4019 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4020 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4021 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4024 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4025 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4027 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4029 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4030 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4031 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4033 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4035 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4036 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4037 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4038 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4041 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4042 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4043 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4044 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4047 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4048 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4049 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4050 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4053 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4054 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4055 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4057 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4059 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4060 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4061 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4063 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4065 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4066 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4067 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4070 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4072 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4073 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4075 =item Use of $* is deprecated
4077 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
4078 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
4079 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
4080 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
4082 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4084 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4085 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4086 old way has bad side effects.
4088 =item Use of $# is deprecated
4090 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
4091 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4093 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4095 (W) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4096 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4097 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4099 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4100 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4101 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4102 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4104 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4106 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4107 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4108 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4109 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4110 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4111 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4113 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4115 (W taint) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4116 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4117 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4118 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4120 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4122 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4123 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4124 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4126 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4127 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4128 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4129 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4130 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4131 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4134 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4136 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4137 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4138 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4139 be removed in a future version.
4141 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4143 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4144 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4145 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4146 removed in a future version.
4148 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4150 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4151 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4152 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4153 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4154 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4155 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4156 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4158 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4160 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4161 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4162 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4163 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4164 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4165 C<defined> operator.
4167 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4169 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4170 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4171 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4174 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4176 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4177 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4178 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4179 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4180 front of your variable.
4182 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4184 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4185 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4186 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4187 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4188 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4190 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
4192 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
4193 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
4194 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
4195 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
4197 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
4199 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
4200 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
4201 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
4202 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
4203 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
4204 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
4206 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
4207 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
4208 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
4209 between interferes with this feature.
4211 =item Variable syntax
4213 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4214 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4217 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4219 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4220 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
4222 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
4223 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4224 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4225 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4226 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4227 variable will no longer be shared.
4229 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
4230 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
4231 will I<never> share the given variable.
4233 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4234 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4235 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
4236 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4238 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex;
4240 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4242 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4243 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4244 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4246 =item Version number must be a constant number
4248 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4249 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4252 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4254 (W) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4255 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4256 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4257 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4258 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4259 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4262 =item Warning: something's wrong
4264 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4265 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4267 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4269 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4270 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4273 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4275 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4276 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4277 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4278 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4282 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4286 but in actual fact, you got
4290 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4292 =item Wide character in %s
4294 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4295 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print) but can be
4296 turned off by C<no warnings 'utf8';>. You are supposed to explicitly
4297 mark the filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4299 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4301 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4302 before now. Check your control flow.
4304 =item X outside of string
4306 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
4307 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4309 =item x outside of string
4311 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4312 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4314 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4316 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4319 =item Xsub called in sort
4321 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4324 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4326 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4327 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4328 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4331 =item You need to quote "%s"
4333 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4334 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4335 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4336 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4337 what you want, put an & in front.)