3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
21 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
24 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
25 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
26 The symbols C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
30 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
32 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
33 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
34 if you want to localize a package variable.
36 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
38 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
39 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
40 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
41 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
44 =item "no" not allowed in expression
46 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
47 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
49 =item "use" not allowed in expression
51 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
52 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
54 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
56 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
59 =item # cannot take a count
61 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
62 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
65 =item # must be followed by a, A or Z
67 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
68 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
69 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
72 =item # must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
74 (F) You had an pack template indicating a counted-length string,
75 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
78 =item # must follow a numeric type
80 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
81 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
84 =item % may only be used in unpack
86 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
87 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
88 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
90 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
92 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
93 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
94 C<'>-delimited regular expression.
96 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
98 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
99 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
100 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
102 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
104 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
105 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
106 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
107 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
108 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
109 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
110 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
112 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
114 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
117 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
119 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
121 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
124 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
126 or a hash slice, such as
128 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
129 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
131 =item %s did not return a true value
133 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
134 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
135 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
136 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
138 =item %s found where operator expected
140 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
141 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
142 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
143 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
145 =item %s had compilation errors
147 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
149 =item %s has too many errors
151 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
152 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
154 =item %s matches null string many times
156 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
157 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
159 =item %s never introduced
161 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
162 before it could possibly have been used.
166 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
168 =item %s: Command not found
170 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
171 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
174 =item %s: Expression syntax
176 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
177 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
180 =item %s: Undefined variable
182 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
183 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
188 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
189 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
192 =item (in cleanup) %s
194 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
195 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
196 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
197 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
198 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
201 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
202 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
204 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
206 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
207 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
208 the previous line just because you saw this message.
210 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
212 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
213 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
215 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
217 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
218 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
220 =item C<-p> destination: %s
222 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
223 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
224 redirected it with select().)
226 =item 500 Server error
230 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
232 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
233 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
235 =item @ outside of string
237 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
238 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
240 =item <> should be quotes
242 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
245 =item accept() on closed fd
247 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
248 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
250 =item Allocation too large: %lx
252 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
254 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
256 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
257 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
258 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
259 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
260 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
261 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
263 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
265 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
267 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
269 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
270 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
271 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
273 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
275 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
276 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
277 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
280 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
281 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
282 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
283 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
285 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
286 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
287 to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
289 =item Args must match #! line
291 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
292 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
293 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
294 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
296 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
298 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
299 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
300 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
302 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
304 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
305 is now heavily deprecated.
307 =item assertion botched: %s
309 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
311 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
313 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
315 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
317 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
318 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
319 know which context to supply to the right side.
321 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
323 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
324 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
327 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
329 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
330 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
331 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
332 that can no longer be found in the table.
334 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
336 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
337 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
338 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
339 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
342 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
344 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
346 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
348 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
349 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
350 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
351 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
352 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
353 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
355 =item Attempt to join self
357 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
358 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
359 need to move the join() to some other thread.
361 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
363 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
364 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
365 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
366 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
367 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
370 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
372 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
373 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
374 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
376 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
378 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
379 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
380 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
381 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
383 =item Bad filehandle: %s
385 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
386 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
387 did it in another package.
389 =item Bad free() ignored
391 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
392 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
393 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
395 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
396 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
397 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
402 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
404 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
406 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
407 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
410 =item Bad name after %s::
412 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
413 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
422 $sym = "mypack::$var";
424 =item Bad symbol for array
426 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
427 wasn't a symbol table entry.
429 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
431 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
432 wasn't a symbol table entry.
434 =item Bad symbol for hash
436 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
437 wasn't a symbol table entry.
439 =item Badly placed ()'s
441 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
442 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
445 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
447 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
448 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
449 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
451 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
453 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
454 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
455 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
457 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
459 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
460 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
462 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
464 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
465 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
466 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
467 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
468 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
470 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
472 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 and
473 therefore non-portable between systems. If you know that your code is
474 always going to be used only in systems that have more than 32-bit
475 integers (which means that Perl should be able to use such), you can
476 silence this warning by
480 .... your code here ...
483 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
485 =item bind() on closed fd
487 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
488 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
490 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
492 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
494 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
496 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
497 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
498 so it was truncated to the string shown.
500 =item Callback called exit
502 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
503 exited by calling exit.
505 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
507 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
508 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
509 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
510 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
512 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
514 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
515 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
517 =item Can't "last" outside a block
519 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
520 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
521 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
522 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
523 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
524 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
526 =item Can't "next" outside a block
528 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
529 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
530 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
531 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
532 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
534 =item Can't read CRTL environ
536 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
537 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
538 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
539 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
541 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
543 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
544 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
545 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
546 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
547 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
549 =item Can't bless non-reference value
551 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
552 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
554 =item Can't break at that line
556 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
557 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
560 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
562 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
563 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
564 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
566 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
568 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
569 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
570 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
571 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
573 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
575 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
576 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
577 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
578 Something like this will reproduce the error:
581 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
582 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
584 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
586 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
587 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
588 Something like this will reproduce the error:
591 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
592 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
594 =item Can't chdir to %s
596 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
597 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
599 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
601 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
603 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
605 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
606 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
616 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
618 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
620 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
621 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
623 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
625 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
626 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
628 =item Can't coerce array into hash
630 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
631 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
632 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
634 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
636 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
637 or other plumbing problems.
639 =item Can't declare %s in my
641 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
642 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
644 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
646 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
648 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
650 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
651 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
654 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
656 (S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
658 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
660 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
661 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
663 =item Can't do setegid!
665 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
668 =item Can't do seteuid!
670 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
672 =item Can't do setuid
674 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
675 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
676 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
677 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
678 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
679 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
681 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
683 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
684 without flags is emulated.
686 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
688 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
689 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
691 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
693 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
694 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
696 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
698 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
699 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
700 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
701 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
702 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
703 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
707 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
708 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
709 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
711 =item Can't execute %s
713 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
714 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
716 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
718 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
719 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
720 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
722 =item Can't find %s on PATH
724 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
727 =item Can't find label %s
729 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
730 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
732 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
734 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
735 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
736 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
738 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
740 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
741 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
742 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
746 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
748 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
750 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
751 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
752 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
753 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
754 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
755 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
756 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
757 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
758 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
759 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
760 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
761 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
762 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
763 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
765 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
767 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
768 can't retrieve its name for later use.
770 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
772 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
773 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
775 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
777 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
778 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
779 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
782 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
784 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
785 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
787 =item Can't localize through a reference
789 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
790 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
791 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
792 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
794 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
796 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
797 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
798 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
801 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
803 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
804 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
805 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
806 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
808 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
810 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
811 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
812 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
813 doing C<make install>.
815 =item Can't locate %s
817 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
818 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
819 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
820 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
821 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
822 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
825 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
827 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
828 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
829 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
831 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
833 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
836 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
838 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
840 =item Can't modify %s in %s
842 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
843 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
845 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
847 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
850 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
852 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
855 =item Can't open %s: %s
857 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
858 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
859 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
860 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
863 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
865 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
866 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
867 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
868 and then read it in under a different file handle.
870 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
872 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
873 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
874 command line for writing.
876 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
878 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
879 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
881 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
883 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
884 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
887 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
889 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
890 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
892 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
894 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
896 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
898 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
899 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
900 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
901 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
903 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
905 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
906 you don't have write permission to the directory.
908 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
910 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
911 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
913 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
915 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
918 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
920 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
921 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
923 =item Can't stat script "%s"
925 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
926 it open already. Bizarre.
928 =item Can't swap uid and euid
930 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
933 =item Can't take log of %g
935 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
936 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
937 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
938 the negative numbers.
940 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
942 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
943 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
944 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
946 =item Can't undef active subroutine
948 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
949 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
950 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
954 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
955 as the main Perl stack.
957 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
959 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
960 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
961 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
962 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
964 =item Can't upgrade to undef
966 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
967 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
968 code calling sv_upgrade.
970 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
972 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
973 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
974 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
976 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
978 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
979 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
980 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
981 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
984 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
986 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
987 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
988 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
990 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
992 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
994 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
996 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
997 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
998 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1000 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
1002 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
1003 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
1004 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
1005 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
1006 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
1008 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
1010 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1011 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1013 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1015 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1016 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
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 global %s in "my"
1025 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1026 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1027 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1028 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1031 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1033 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1034 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1035 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1037 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1039 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1040 references can be weakened.
1042 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1044 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1045 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1046 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1048 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1050 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1051 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1053 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1055 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1056 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1057 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1059 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1061 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1063 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1065 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1066 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1067 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that the last two constructs
1068 are not currently implemented, they are placeholders for future extensions.
1070 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1072 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1073 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1074 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1075 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1076 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1078 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1080 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1081 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1082 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1083 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1084 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1086 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1088 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1090 chmod 777, $filename
1092 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1093 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1095 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1097 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1099 =item Compilation failed in require
1101 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1102 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1103 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1105 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1107 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1108 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1109 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1110 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1111 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1112 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1113 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1114 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1115 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1117 =item connect() on closed fd
1119 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1120 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1122 =item Constant is not %s reference
1124 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1125 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1126 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1127 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1128 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1130 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1132 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1133 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1136 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1138 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1139 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1142 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1144 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1146 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1148 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1150 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1152 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1153 expression compiler gave it.
1155 =item corrupted regexp program
1157 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1158 a valid magic number.
1160 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1162 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1163 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1164 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1165 case it indicates something else.
1167 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1169 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1170 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1171 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1173 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1175 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1176 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1177 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1179 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1181 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1182 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1183 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1185 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1187 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1189 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1191 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1192 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1196 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1197 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1199 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1201 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1202 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1203 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1204 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1205 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1206 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1207 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1208 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1211 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1213 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1215 =item do_study: out of memory
1217 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1219 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1221 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1224 =item elseif should be elsif
1226 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1227 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1228 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1229 unlikely to be what you want.
1231 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1233 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1234 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1236 =item entering effective %s failed
1238 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1239 effective uids or gids failed.
1241 =item Error converting file specification %s
1243 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1244 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1245 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1246 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1247 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1249 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1251 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1252 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1253 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1255 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1257 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1258 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1259 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1261 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1263 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1264 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1265 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1266 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1267 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1268 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1270 =item Excessively long <> operator
1272 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1273 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1274 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1275 variable and glob that.
1277 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1279 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1281 =item Exiting eval via %s
1283 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1284 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1286 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1288 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1289 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1290 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1292 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1294 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1295 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1297 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1299 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1300 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1302 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1304 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1305 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1306 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1307 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1309 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1311 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1312 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1313 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1314 the Perl source code is distressed.
1316 =item fcntl is not implemented
1318 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1319 PDP-11 or something?
1321 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1323 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1324 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1325 the FileHandle package.
1327 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1329 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1330 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1331 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1332 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1335 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1337 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1338 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1339 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1340 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1343 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1345 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1346 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1347 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1350 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1352 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1353 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1354 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1357 =item Format %s redefined
1359 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1363 eval "format NAME =...";
1366 =item Format not terminated
1368 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1369 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1371 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1381 (or something like that).
1383 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1385 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1387 =item gethostent not implemented
1389 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1390 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1393 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1395 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1396 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1398 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1400 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1401 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1403 =item Glob not terminated
1405 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1406 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1407 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1408 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1410 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1412 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1413 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1414 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1416 =item goto must have label
1418 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1419 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1421 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1423 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1424 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1425 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1427 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1429 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1430 is now heavily deprecated.
1432 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1434 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 and
1435 therefore non-portable between systems. If you know that your code is
1436 always going to be used only in systems that have more than 32-bit
1437 integers (which means that Perl should be able to use such), you can
1438 silence this warning by
1441 no warning 'unsafe';
1442 .... your code here ...
1445 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
1447 =item Identifier too long
1449 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1450 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1451 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1452 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1454 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1456 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1457 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1458 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1460 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1462 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1463 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1464 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1467 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1469 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1470 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1471 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1473 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1474 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1475 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1476 properly converting the text file format.
1478 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1479 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1480 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1482 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1483 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1486 =item Illegal division by zero
1488 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1489 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1491 =item Illegal modulus zero
1493 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1494 don't take to this kindly.
1496 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1498 (F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1500 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1502 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1504 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1506 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1507 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1509 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1511 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1512 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1514 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1516 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1517 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1518 before the illegal character.
1520 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1522 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1523 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1525 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1527 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1528 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1529 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1530 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1531 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1532 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1533 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1535 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1537 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1538 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1539 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1540 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1541 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1542 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1543 for more information.
1545 =item Insecure directory in %s
1547 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1548 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1551 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1553 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1554 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1555 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1556 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1557 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1559 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1561 (F,X) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1562 either as a literal in your code or as a scalar is too big for your
1563 architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest literal hex, octal
1564 or binary number representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF,
1565 037777777777, or 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively.
1566 Note that Perl transparently promotes decimal literals to a floating
1567 point representation internally--subject to loss of precision errors
1568 in subsequent operations--so this limit usually doesn't apply to
1569 decimal literals. If the overflow is in a literal of your code, the
1570 error is untrappable (there is no way the code could work safely in
1571 your system), if the overflow happens in hex() or oct() the error is
1574 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1576 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1577 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1578 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1579 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1580 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1581 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1582 and execute the specified command.
1584 =item internal disaster in regexp
1586 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1588 =item glob failed (%s)
1590 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1591 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1592 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1593 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1594 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1595 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1596 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1597 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1598 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1599 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1602 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1604 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1606 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1608 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1609 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1611 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1613 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1614 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1616 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1618 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1619 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1622 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1624 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1625 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1628 =item ioctl is not implemented
1630 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1631 strange for a machine that supports C.
1633 =item junk on end of regexp
1635 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1637 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1639 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1640 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1641 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1643 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1645 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1646 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1649 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1651 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1652 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1655 =item leaving effective %s failed
1657 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1658 effective uids or gids failed.
1660 =item listen() on closed fd
1662 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1663 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1665 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1667 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1668 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1670 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1672 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1673 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1674 ended earlier on the current line.
1676 =item Misplaced _ in number
1678 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1680 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1682 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1683 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1684 one line to the next.
1686 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1688 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1689 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1691 =item Missing command in piped open
1693 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1694 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1696 =item Missing operator before %s?
1698 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1699 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1701 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1703 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1704 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1705 you were last editing.
1707 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1709 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1710 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1711 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1713 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1716 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1718 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1720 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1721 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1724 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1726 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1727 be created for some peculiar reason.
1729 =item Module name must be constant
1731 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1733 =item msg%s not implemented
1735 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1737 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1739 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1740 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1742 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1744 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1745 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1746 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1747 provided for just this purpose.
1749 =item Negative length
1751 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1752 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1754 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1756 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1757 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1759 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1760 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1764 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1765 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1767 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1769 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1770 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1771 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1774 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1776 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1778 =item No comma allowed after %s
1780 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1781 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1782 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1784 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1785 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1786 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1787 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1788 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1789 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1790 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1791 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1792 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1793 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1794 this error was triggered?
1796 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1798 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1799 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1800 want to pipe the output from this command.
1802 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1804 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1805 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1806 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1807 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1808 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1811 =item No dbm on this machine
1813 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1814 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1816 =item No DBsub routine
1818 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1819 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1820 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1821 ordinary subroutine call.
1823 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1825 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1826 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1827 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1829 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1831 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1832 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1833 from which to read data for stdin.
1835 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1837 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1838 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1839 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1841 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1843 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1844 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1845 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1847 =item No Perl script found in input
1849 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1850 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1852 =item No setregid available
1854 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1857 =item No setreuid available
1859 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1862 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1864 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1867 =item No such array field
1869 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1870 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1871 array indices for that to work.
1873 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1875 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1876 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1877 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1878 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1880 =item No such pipe open
1882 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1883 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1884 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1886 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1888 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1889 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1891 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1893 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
1894 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1895 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1896 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1899 =item Not a CODE reference
1901 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1902 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1903 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1904 See also L<perlref>.
1906 =item Not a format reference
1908 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1909 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1911 =item Not a GLOB reference
1913 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1914 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1915 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1916 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1918 =item Not a HASH reference
1920 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1921 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1922 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1924 =item Not a perl script
1926 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1927 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1930 =item Not a SCALAR reference
1932 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1933 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1934 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1936 =item Not a subroutine reference
1938 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1939 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1940 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1941 See also L<perlref>.
1943 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
1945 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1946 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1948 =item Not an ARRAY reference
1950 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1951 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1952 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1954 =item Not enough arguments for %s
1956 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1958 =item Not enough format arguments
1960 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1963 =item Null filename used
1965 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
1966 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1968 =item Null picture in formline
1970 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1971 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1972 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1974 =item NULL OP IN RUN
1976 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1980 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1982 =item NULL regexp argument
1984 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
1986 =item NULL regexp parameter
1988 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1990 =item Number too long
1992 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1993 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1994 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1995 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1997 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
1999 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 and
2000 therefore non-portable between systems. If you know that your code is
2001 always going to be used only in systems that have more than 32-bit
2002 integers (which means that Perl should be able to use such), you can
2003 silence this warning by
2006 no warning 'unsafe';
2007 .... your code here ...
2010 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2012 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2014 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2015 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2017 =item Offset outside string
2019 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2020 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2021 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2022 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2026 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2030 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2032 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2034 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2035 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2036 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2037 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2038 true. See L<overload>.
2040 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2042 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2043 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2044 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2045 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2046 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2048 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2050 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2051 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2053 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2055 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2056 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2058 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2059 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2060 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2061 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2062 error is trappable I<once>.
2064 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2066 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2067 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2068 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2069 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2071 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2073 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2074 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2075 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2079 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2082 =item panic: ck_grep
2084 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2086 =item panic: ck_split
2088 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2090 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2092 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2093 are in the savestack.
2095 =item panic: del_backref
2097 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2102 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2103 it wasn't an eval context.
2105 =item panic: do_match
2107 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2109 =item panic: do_split
2111 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2113 =item panic: do_subst
2115 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2117 =item panic: do_trans
2119 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2123 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2127 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2128 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2130 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2132 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2134 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2136 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2138 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2140 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2144 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2145 it wasn't a block context.
2147 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2149 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2151 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2153 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2154 invalid enum on the top of it.
2158 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2160 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2162 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2163 references to an object.
2165 =item panic: mapstart
2167 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2169 =item panic: null array
2171 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2173 =item panic: pad_alloc
2175 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2176 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2178 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2180 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2181 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2183 =item panic: pad_free po
2185 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2187 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2189 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2190 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2192 =item panic: pad_sv po
2194 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2196 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2198 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2199 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2201 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2203 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2205 =item panic: pp_iter
2207 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2209 =item panic: realloc
2211 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2213 =item panic: restartop
2215 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2216 didn't supply the destination.
2220 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2221 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2223 =item panic: scan_num
2225 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2227 =item panic: sv_insert
2229 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2232 =item panic: top_env
2234 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2238 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2240 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2242 (W) You said something like
2248 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2250 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2252 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2254 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2255 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2256 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2258 =item Permission denied
2260 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2262 =item pid %x not a child
2264 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2265 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2266 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2268 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2270 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2271 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2273 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2275 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2276 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2277 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2278 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2280 You probably wrote something like this:
2287 when you should have written this:
2294 If you really want comments, build your list the
2295 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2299 'b', # another comment
2302 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2304 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2305 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2306 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2309 You probably wrote something like this:
2313 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2314 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2318 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2320 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2321 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2322 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2323 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2325 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2327 (S) The old irregular construct
2331 is now misinterpreted as
2335 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2336 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2337 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2340 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2342 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2343 Check your logic flow.
2345 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2347 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2348 Check your logic flow.
2350 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2352 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2353 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2354 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2358 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2360 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2361 or defined with a different function prototype.
2363 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2365 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2366 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2367 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2368 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2370 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2372 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2373 Check your logic flow.
2375 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2377 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2379 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2381 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2382 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2383 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2385 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2387 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2388 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2390 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2392 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2393 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2395 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2397 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2398 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2399 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2400 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2402 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2403 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2404 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2405 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2407 =item Reference is already weak
2409 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2410 Doing so has no effect.
2412 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2414 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2415 reference count of other than 1.
2417 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2419 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2420 could match an empty string.
2422 =item regexp memory corruption
2424 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2425 expression compiler gave it.
2427 =item regexp out of space
2429 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2431 =item Reversed %s= operator
2433 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2434 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2436 =item Runaway format
2438 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2439 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2440 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2441 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2442 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2444 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2446 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2447 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2448 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2449 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2450 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2451 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2453 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2454 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2455 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2458 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2460 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2461 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2462 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2463 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2464 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2465 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2467 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2468 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2469 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2472 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2474 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2475 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2477 =item Search pattern not terminated
2479 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2480 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2481 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2483 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2485 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2486 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2488 =item select not implemented
2490 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2492 =item sem%s not implemented
2494 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2496 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2498 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2499 that had previously been marked as free.
2501 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2503 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2504 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2506 =item Send on closed socket
2508 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2509 Check your logic flow.
2511 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2513 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2516 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2518 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2519 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2521 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2523 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2524 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2526 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2528 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2533 Also known as "500 Server error".
2535 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2537 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2538 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2539 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2540 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2541 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2542 for more information:
2544 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2545 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2546 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2547 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2548 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2550 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2552 =item setegid() not implemented
2554 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2555 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2558 =item seteuid() not implemented
2560 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2561 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2564 =item setrgid() not implemented
2566 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2567 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2570 =item setruid() not implemented
2572 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2573 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2576 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2578 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2579 because the world might have written on it already.
2581 =item shm%s not implemented
2583 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2585 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2587 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2589 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2591 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2592 put it into the wrong package?
2594 =item sort is now a reserved word
2596 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2597 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2599 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2601 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2602 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2603 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2605 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2607 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2608 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2612 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2613 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2614 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2616 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2618 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2619 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2621 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2623 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2624 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2625 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2626 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2629 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2631 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2632 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2633 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2634 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2635 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2637 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2639 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2640 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2643 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2645 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2649 eval "sub name { ... }";
2652 =item Substitution loop
2654 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2655 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2656 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2657 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2659 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2661 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2662 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2663 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2665 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2667 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2668 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2669 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2671 =item substr outside of string
2673 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2674 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2675 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2676 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2677 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2679 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2681 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2682 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2684 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2686 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2687 real and effective uids or gids.
2691 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2693 A keyword is misspelled.
2694 A semicolon is missing.
2696 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2697 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2698 A closing quote is missing.
2700 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2701 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2702 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2703 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2704 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2705 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2706 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2707 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2708 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2710 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2712 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2713 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2716 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2718 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2719 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2720 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2721 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2723 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2725 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2726 Check your logic flow.
2728 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2730 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2731 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2733 =item tell() on unopened file
2735 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2736 never opened or has since been closed.
2738 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2740 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2741 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2743 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2745 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2746 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2755 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2756 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2758 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2760 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2761 to the probings of Configure.
2763 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2765 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2766 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2767 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2768 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2771 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2773 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2774 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2775 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2777 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2779 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2781 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2782 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2783 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2784 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2785 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2786 %ENV which produced the warning.
2788 =item times not implemented
2790 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2791 you're not running on Unix.
2793 =item Too few args to syscall
2795 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2796 system call to call, silly dilly.
2798 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2800 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2801 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2802 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2803 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2806 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2807 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2808 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2809 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2811 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2812 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2814 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2816 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2817 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2818 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2824 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2825 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2828 =item Too many args to syscall
2830 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2832 =item Too many arguments for %s
2834 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2836 =item trailing \ in regexp
2838 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2841 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2843 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2844 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2845 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2847 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2849 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2852 =item truncate not implemented
2854 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2855 Configure knows about.
2857 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2859 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2860 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2861 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2862 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2864 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2866 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2867 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2869 =item umask not implemented
2871 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2872 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2874 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2876 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2878 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2880 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2881 contexts were entered and left.
2883 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2885 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2886 values were temporarily localized.
2888 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2890 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2891 were entered and left.
2893 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2895 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2896 scalars were allocated and freed.
2898 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2900 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2901 another package? See L<perlform>.
2903 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2905 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2906 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2908 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2910 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2911 has since been undefined.
2913 =item Undefined subroutine called
2915 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2916 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2918 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2920 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2921 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2923 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2925 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2926 another package? See L<perlform>.
2928 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2930 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2931 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2933 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2935 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2936 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2938 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
2940 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
2942 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
2944 (F) The second argument of 3-arguments open is not one from the list
2945 of C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>, C<+L<gt>>,
2946 C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|-> of possible open() modes.
2948 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2950 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2951 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2952 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2953 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2955 =item unmatched () in regexp
2957 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2958 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
2959 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
2961 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
2963 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
2964 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
2965 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
2966 place you were last editing.
2968 =item unmatched [] in regexp
2970 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2971 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2974 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2976 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
2977 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2978 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2980 =item Unrecognized character %s
2982 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2983 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2984 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
2986 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
2988 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
2991 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2993 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2994 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2996 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
2998 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2999 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3000 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3002 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3004 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3005 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3006 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3008 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3010 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3012 =item Unsupported function fork
3014 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3016 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3017 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3018 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3020 =item Unsupported function %s
3022 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3023 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3025 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3027 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3028 least that's what Configure thought.
3030 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3032 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3033 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3034 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3035 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3037 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3039 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3040 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3042 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3044 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3045 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3046 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3047 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3049 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3051 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3052 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3054 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3056 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3057 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3059 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3061 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3062 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3063 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3065 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3067 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3068 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3069 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3070 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3072 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3073 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3074 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3075 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3076 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3078 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3079 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3080 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3081 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3083 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3084 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3085 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3087 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3089 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3090 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3091 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3092 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3093 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3094 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3096 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3098 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3099 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3102 =item Use of uninitialized value
3104 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3105 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3106 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3108 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3110 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3112 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3114 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3115 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3116 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3117 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3118 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3119 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3123 when you meant to say
3125 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3127 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3128 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3133 when you should have said
3137 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3138 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3139 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3140 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3141 L<perlref> for more on this.
3143 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3145 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3146 valid when C<untie> was called.
3148 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3150 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3151 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3152 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3153 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3154 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3156 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3158 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3159 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3160 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3163 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3165 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3166 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3167 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3168 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3169 on the front of your variable.
3171 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3173 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3174 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3175 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3176 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3178 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3180 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3181 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3182 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3183 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3184 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3185 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3188 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3189 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3190 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3191 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3193 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3195 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3196 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3198 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3199 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3200 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3201 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3202 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3203 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3205 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3206 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3207 will I<never> share the given variable.
3209 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3210 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3211 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3212 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3215 =item Variable syntax
3217 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3218 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3221 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3223 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3225 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3226 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3229 are supported and installed on your system.
3230 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3232 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3233 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3234 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3235 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3236 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3237 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3238 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3239 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3240 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3242 =item Warning: something's wrong
3244 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3245 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3247 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3249 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3250 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3252 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3254 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3255 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3256 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3257 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3261 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3265 but in actual fact, you got
3269 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3271 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3273 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3274 Check your logic flow.
3276 =item X outside of string
3278 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3279 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3281 =item x outside of string
3283 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3284 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3286 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3288 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3290 =item Xsub called in sort
3292 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3294 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3296 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3297 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3298 Use a filename instead.
3300 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3302 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3303 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3304 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3305 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3307 =item You need to quote "%s"
3309 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3310 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3311 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3312 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3314 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3316 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3317 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3318 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3320 =item \1 better written as $1
3322 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3323 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3324 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3325 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3326 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3328 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3330 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3331 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3332 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3334 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3336 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3337 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3338 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3339 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3342 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3349 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3351 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3352 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3354 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3356 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3364 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3365 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3366 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3367 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3369 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3371 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3372 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3374 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3376 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3377 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3378 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3379 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"