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 scope
38 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the same scope, effectively
39 eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost always
40 a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
41 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
44 =item "no" not allowed in expression
46 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
47 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
49 =item "use" not allowed in expression
51 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
52 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
54 =item % may only be used in unpack
56 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
57 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
58 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
60 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
62 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
63 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
64 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
66 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
68 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
73 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
75 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
80 or a hash slice, such as
82 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
83 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
85 =item %s did not return a true value
87 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
88 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
89 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
90 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
92 =item %s found where operator expected
94 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
95 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
96 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
97 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
99 =item %s had compilation errors
101 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
103 =item %s has too many errors
105 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
106 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
108 =item %s matches null string many times
110 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
111 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
113 =item %s never introduced
115 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
116 before it could possibly have been used.
120 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
122 =item %s: Command not found
124 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
125 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
128 =item %s: Expression syntax
130 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
131 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
134 =item %s: Undefined variable
136 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
137 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
142 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
143 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
146 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
148 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
149 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
150 the previous line just because you saw this message.
152 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
154 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
155 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
157 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
159 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
160 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
162 =item C<-p> destination: %s
164 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
165 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
166 redirected it with select().)
168 =item 500 Server error
172 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
174 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
175 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
177 =item @ outside of string
179 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
180 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
182 =item accept() on closed fd
184 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
185 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
187 =item Allocation too large: %lx
189 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
191 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
193 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
194 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
195 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
196 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
197 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
198 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
200 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
202 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
204 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
206 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
207 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
208 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
210 =item Args must match #! line
212 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
213 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
214 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
215 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
217 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
219 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
220 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
221 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
223 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
225 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
226 is now heavily deprecated.
228 =item assertion botched: %s
230 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
232 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
234 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
236 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
238 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
239 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
240 know which context to supply to the right side.
242 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
244 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
245 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
248 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
250 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
251 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
252 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
253 that can no longer be found in the table.
255 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
257 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
258 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
259 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
260 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
263 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
265 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
267 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
269 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
270 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
271 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
272 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
273 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
274 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
276 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
278 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
279 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
280 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
281 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
282 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
285 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
287 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
288 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
289 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
291 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
293 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
294 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
295 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
296 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
298 =item Bad filehandle: %s
300 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
301 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
302 did it in another package.
304 =item Bad free() ignored
306 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
307 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
308 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
310 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
311 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
312 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
317 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
319 =item Bad name after %s::
321 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
322 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
331 $sym = "mypack::$var";
333 =item Bad symbol for array
335 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
336 wasn't a symbol table entry.
338 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
340 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
341 wasn't a symbol table entry.
343 =item Bad symbol for hash
345 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
346 wasn't a symbol table entry.
348 =item Badly placed ()'s
350 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
351 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
354 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
356 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
357 subroutine identifier, in curly braces or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
358 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
360 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
362 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
363 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
364 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
366 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
368 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
369 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
371 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
373 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
374 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
375 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
376 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
377 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
379 =item bind() on closed fd
381 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
382 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
384 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
386 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
388 =item Callback called exit
390 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
391 exited by calling exit.
393 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
395 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
396 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
397 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
398 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
400 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
402 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
403 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
405 =item Can't "last" outside a block
407 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
408 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
409 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
410 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
411 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
412 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
414 =item Can't "next" outside a block
416 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
417 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
418 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
419 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
420 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
422 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
424 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
425 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
426 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
427 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
428 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
430 =item Can't bless non-reference value
432 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
433 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
435 =item Can't break at that line
437 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
438 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
441 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
443 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
444 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
445 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
447 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
449 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
450 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
451 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
452 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
454 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
456 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
457 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
458 neither an object reference nor a package name. (Perhaps it's null?)
459 Something like this will reproduce the error:
462 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
463 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
465 =item Can't chdir to %s
467 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
468 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
470 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
472 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
473 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
483 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
485 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
487 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
488 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
490 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
492 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
493 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
495 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
497 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
498 or other plumbing problems.
500 =item Can't declare %s in my
502 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
503 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
505 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
507 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
509 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
511 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
512 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
515 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
517 (S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
519 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
521 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
522 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
524 =item Can't do setegid!
526 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
529 =item Can't do seteuid!
531 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
533 =item Can't do setuid
535 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
536 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
537 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
538 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
539 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
540 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
542 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
544 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
545 without flags is emulated.
547 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
549 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
550 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
552 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
554 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
555 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
557 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
559 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
560 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
561 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
562 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
563 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
564 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
568 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
569 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
570 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
572 =item Can't execute %s
574 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
575 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
577 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
579 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
580 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
581 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
583 =item Can't find %s on PATH
585 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
588 =item Can't find label %s
590 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
591 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
593 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
595 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
596 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
597 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
599 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
601 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
602 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
603 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
607 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
609 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
611 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
612 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
613 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
614 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
615 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
616 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
617 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
618 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
619 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
620 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
621 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
622 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
623 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
624 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
626 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
628 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
629 can't retrieve its name for later use.
631 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
633 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
634 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
636 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
638 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
639 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
640 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
643 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
645 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
646 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
648 =item Can't localize through a reference
650 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
651 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
652 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
653 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
655 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
657 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
658 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
659 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
662 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
664 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
665 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
666 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
667 doing C<make install>.
669 =item Can't locate %s in @INC
671 (F) You said to do (or require, or use) a file that couldn't be found
672 in any of the libraries mentioned in @INC. Perhaps you need to set the
673 PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra library
674 is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or maybe
675 you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>.
677 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
679 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
680 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
681 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
683 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
685 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
688 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
690 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
692 =item Can't modify %s in %s
694 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
695 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
697 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
699 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
702 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
704 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
707 =item Can't open %s: %s
709 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
710 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
711 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
712 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
715 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
717 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
718 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
719 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
720 and then read it in under a different file handle.
722 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
724 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
725 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
726 command line for writing.
728 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
730 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
731 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
733 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
735 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
736 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
739 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
741 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
742 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
744 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
746 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
748 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
750 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
751 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
752 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
753 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
755 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
757 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
758 you don't have write permission to the directory.
760 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
762 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
763 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
765 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
767 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
770 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
772 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
773 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
775 =item Can't stat script "%s"
777 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
778 it open already. Bizarre.
780 =item Can't swap uid and euid
782 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
785 =item Can't take log of %g
787 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
788 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
789 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
790 the negative numbers.
792 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
794 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
795 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
796 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
798 =item Can't undef active subroutine
800 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
801 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
802 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
806 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
807 as the main Perl stack.
809 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
811 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
812 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
813 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
814 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
816 =item Can't upgrade to undef
818 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
819 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
820 code calling sv_upgrade.
822 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
824 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
825 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
826 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
828 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
830 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
831 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
832 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
833 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
836 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
838 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
840 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
842 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
843 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
844 test the type of the reference, if need be.
846 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
848 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
849 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
850 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
851 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
852 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
854 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
856 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
857 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
859 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
861 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
862 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
864 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
866 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
867 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
869 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
871 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
872 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
873 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
874 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
877 =item Can't use subscript on %s
879 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
880 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
881 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
883 =item Can't x= to read-only value
885 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
886 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
887 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
889 =item Cannot find an opnumber for "%s"
891 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
892 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
894 =item Cannot resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
896 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
897 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
898 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
900 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
902 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
903 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
904 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
905 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
906 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
908 =item Character class syntax [: :] is reserved for future extensions
910 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
911 with "[:" and ending with ":]" is reserved for future extensions.
912 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
913 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
914 backslash: "\[:" and ":\]".
916 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
918 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
919 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
920 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
921 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
922 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
924 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
926 (W) A novice will sometimes say
930 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
931 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
933 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
935 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
937 =item Compilation failed in require
939 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
940 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
941 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
943 =item connect() on closed fd
945 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
946 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
948 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
950 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
951 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
954 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
956 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
957 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
960 =item Copy method did not return a reference
962 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
964 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
966 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
968 =item corrupted regexp pointers
970 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
971 expression compiler gave it.
973 =item corrupted regexp program
975 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
976 a valid magic number.
978 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
980 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
981 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
982 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
983 case it indicates something else.
985 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
987 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
988 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
989 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
991 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
993 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
995 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
997 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
998 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1002 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1003 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1005 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1007 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1008 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1009 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1010 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1011 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1012 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1013 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1014 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1017 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1019 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1021 =item do_study: out of memory
1023 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1025 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1027 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1030 =item elseif should be elsif
1032 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1033 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1034 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1035 unlikely to be what you want.
1037 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1039 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1040 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1042 =item Error converting file specification %s
1044 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1045 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1046 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1047 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1048 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1050 =item Excessively long <> operator
1052 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1053 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1054 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1055 variable and glob that.
1057 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1059 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1061 =item Exiting eval via %s
1063 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1064 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1066 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1068 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1069 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1070 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1072 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1074 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1075 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1077 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1079 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1080 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1082 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1084 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1085 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1086 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1087 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p or 'MyPackage');
1089 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1091 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1092 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1093 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1094 the Perl source code is distressed.
1096 =item fcntl is not implemented
1098 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1099 PDP-11 or something?
1101 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1103 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1104 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1105 the FileHandle package.
1107 =item Filehandle %s opened for only input
1109 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1110 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1111 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1112 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1115 =item Filehandle opened for only input
1117 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1118 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1119 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1120 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1123 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1125 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1126 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1127 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1130 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1132 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1133 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1134 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1137 =item Format %s redefined
1139 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1143 eval "format NAME =...";
1146 =item Format not terminated
1148 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1149 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1151 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1161 (or something like that).
1163 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1165 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1167 =item gethostent not implemented
1169 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1170 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1173 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1175 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1176 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1178 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1180 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1181 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1184 =item Glob not terminated
1186 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1187 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1188 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1189 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1191 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1193 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1194 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1195 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1197 =item goto must have label
1199 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1200 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1202 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1204 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1205 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1206 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1208 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1210 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1211 is now heavily deprecated.
1213 =item Identifier too long
1215 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1216 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1217 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1218 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1220 =item Ill-formed logical name |%s| in prime_env_iter
1222 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. A logical name was encountered when preparing
1223 to iterate over %ENV which violates the syntactic rules governing logical
1224 names. Because it cannot be translated normally, it is skipped, and will not
1225 appear in %ENV. This may be a benign occurrence, as some software packages
1226 might directly modify logical name tables and introduce nonstandard names,
1227 or it may indicate that a logical name table has been corrupted.
1229 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1231 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1232 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1233 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1235 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1236 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1237 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1238 properly converting the text file format.
1240 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1241 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1242 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1244 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1245 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1248 =item Illegal division by zero
1250 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1251 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1253 =item Illegal modulus zero
1255 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1256 don't take to this kindly.
1258 =item Illegal octal digit
1260 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1262 =item Illegal octal digit ignored
1264 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1265 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1267 =item Illegal hex digit ignored
1269 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F in a
1270 hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1271 before the illegal character.
1273 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1275 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1276 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1278 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1280 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1281 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1282 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1283 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1284 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1285 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1286 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1288 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1290 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1291 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1292 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1293 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1294 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1295 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1296 for more information.
1298 =item Insecure directory in %s
1300 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1301 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1306 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1307 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> is derived from data supplied (or
1308 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1309 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1311 =item Integer overflow in hex number
1313 (S) The literal hex number you have specified is too big for your
1314 architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest hex literal is
1317 =item Integer overflow in octal number
1319 (S) The literal octal number you have specified is too big for your
1320 architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest octal literal is
1323 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1325 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1326 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1327 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1328 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/exec>). Somehow, this count
1329 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1330 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1331 and execute the specified command.
1333 =item internal disaster in regexp
1335 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1337 =item internal error: glob failed
1339 (P) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1340 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. This may mean that your csh (C shell) is
1341 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1342 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1343 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1344 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1345 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1346 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1348 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1350 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1352 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1354 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1355 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1357 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1359 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1360 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1362 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1364 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1365 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1368 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1370 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1371 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1374 =item ioctl is not implemented
1376 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1377 strange for a machine that supports C.
1379 =item junk on end of regexp
1381 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1383 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1385 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1386 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1387 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1389 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1391 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1392 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1395 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1397 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1398 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1401 =item listen() on closed fd
1403 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1404 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1406 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1408 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1409 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1411 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1413 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1414 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1415 ended earlier on the current line.
1417 =item Misplaced _ in number
1419 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1421 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1423 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1424 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1425 one line to the next.
1427 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1429 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1430 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1432 =item Missing operator before %s?
1434 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1435 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1437 =item Missing right bracket
1439 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly brackets (braces) than closing ones.
1440 As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you were last
1443 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1445 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1446 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1447 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1449 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1452 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1454 =item Modification of noncreatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1456 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1457 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1460 =item Modification of noncreatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1462 (F) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1463 be created for some peculiar reason.
1465 =item Module name must be constant
1467 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1469 =item msg%s not implemented
1471 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1473 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1475 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1476 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1478 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1480 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1481 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1482 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1483 provided for just this purpose.
1485 =item Negative length
1487 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1488 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1490 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1492 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1493 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1495 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1496 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1500 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1501 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1503 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1505 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1506 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1507 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1510 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1512 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1514 =item No comma allowed after %s
1516 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1517 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1518 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1520 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1521 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1522 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1523 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1524 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1525 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1526 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1527 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1528 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1529 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1530 this error was triggered?
1532 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1534 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1535 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1536 want to pipe the output from this command.
1538 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1540 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1541 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1542 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1543 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1544 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1547 =item No dbm on this machine
1549 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1550 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1552 =item No DBsub routine
1554 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1555 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1556 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1557 ordinary subroutine call.
1559 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1561 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1562 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1563 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1565 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1567 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1568 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1569 from which to read data for stdin.
1571 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1573 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1574 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1575 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1577 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1579 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1580 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1581 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1583 =item No Perl script found in input
1585 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1586 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1588 =item No setregid available
1590 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1593 =item No setreuid available
1595 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1598 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1600 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1603 =item No such pipe open
1605 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1606 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1607 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1609 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1611 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1612 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1614 =item Not a CODE reference
1616 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1617 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1618 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1619 See also L<perlref>.
1621 =item Not a format reference
1623 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1624 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1626 =item Not a GLOB reference
1628 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1629 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1630 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1631 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1633 =item Not a HASH reference
1635 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1636 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1637 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1639 =item Not a perl script
1641 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1642 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1645 =item Not a SCALAR reference
1647 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1648 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1649 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1651 =item Not a subroutine reference
1653 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1654 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1655 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1656 See also L<perlref>.
1658 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
1660 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1661 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1663 =item Not an ARRAY reference
1665 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1666 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1667 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1669 =item Not enough arguments for %s
1671 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1673 =item Not enough format arguments
1675 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1678 =item Null filename used
1680 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
1681 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1683 =item Null picture in formline
1685 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1686 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1687 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1689 =item NULL OP IN RUN
1691 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1695 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1697 =item NULL regexp argument
1699 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
1701 =item NULL regexp parameter
1703 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1705 =item Number too long
1707 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1708 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1709 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1710 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1712 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
1714 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
1715 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
1717 =item Offset outside string
1719 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
1720 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
1721 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
1722 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
1726 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1730 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1732 =item Operation `%s': no method found,%s
1734 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
1735 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
1736 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
1737 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
1738 true. See L<overload>.
1740 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
1742 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
1743 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
1744 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
1745 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
1746 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
1748 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
1750 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
1751 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
1753 =item Out of memory during request for %s
1755 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1756 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
1758 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
1759 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
1760 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
1761 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
1762 error is trappable I<once>.
1764 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
1766 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1767 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
1768 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
1769 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
1771 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
1773 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
1774 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
1775 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
1779 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
1782 =item panic: ck_grep
1784 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
1786 =item panic: ck_split
1788 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
1790 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
1792 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
1793 are in the savestack.
1797 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
1798 it wasn't an eval context.
1800 =item panic: do_match
1802 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1804 =item panic: do_split
1806 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
1808 =item panic: do_subst
1810 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1812 =item panic: do_trans
1814 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
1818 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
1822 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
1823 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
1825 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
1827 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
1829 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
1831 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
1835 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
1836 it wasn't a block context.
1838 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
1840 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
1842 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
1844 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
1845 invalid enum on the top of it.
1849 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
1851 =item panic: mapstart
1853 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
1855 =item panic: null array
1857 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
1859 =item panic: pad_alloc
1861 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1862 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1864 =item panic: pad_free curpad
1866 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1867 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1869 =item panic: pad_free po
1871 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
1873 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
1875 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1876 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1878 =item panic: pad_sv po
1880 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
1882 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
1884 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
1885 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
1887 =item panic: pad_swipe po
1889 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
1891 =item panic: pp_iter
1893 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
1895 =item panic: realloc
1897 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
1899 =item panic: restartop
1901 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
1902 didn't supply the destination.
1906 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
1907 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
1909 =item panic: scan_num
1911 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
1913 =item panic: sv_insert
1915 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
1918 =item panic: top_env
1920 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
1924 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
1926 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
1928 (W) You said something like
1934 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
1936 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
1938 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
1940 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
1941 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
1942 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
1944 =item Permission denied
1946 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
1948 =item pid %d not a child
1950 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
1951 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
1952 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
1954 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
1956 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
1957 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
1959 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
1961 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
1962 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
1963 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
1964 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
1966 You probably wrote something like this:
1973 when you should have written this:
1980 If you really want comments, build your list the
1981 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
1985 'b', # another comment
1988 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
1990 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
1991 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
1992 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
1995 You probably wrote something like this:
1999 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2000 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2004 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2006 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2007 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2008 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2009 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2011 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2013 (S) The old irregular construct
2017 is now misinterpreted as
2021 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2022 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2023 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2026 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2028 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2029 Check your logic flow.
2031 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2033 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2034 Check your logic flow.
2036 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2038 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2039 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2040 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2044 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2046 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2047 or defined with a different function prototype.
2049 =item Read on closed filehandle E<lt>%sE<gt>
2051 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2052 Check your logic flow.
2054 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2056 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2058 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2060 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2061 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2062 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2064 =item Recursive inheritance detected
2066 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2067 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2069 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2071 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2072 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2073 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2074 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2076 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2077 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2078 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2079 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2081 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2083 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2084 reference count of other than 1.
2086 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2088 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2089 could match an empty string.
2091 =item regexp memory corruption
2093 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2094 expression compiler gave it.
2096 =item regexp out of space
2098 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2100 =item regexp too big
2102 (F) The current implementation of regular expressions uses shorts as
2103 address offsets within a string. Unfortunately this means that if
2104 the regular expression compiles to longer than 32767, it'll blow up.
2105 Usually when you want a regular expression this big, there is a better
2106 way to do it with multiple statements. See L<perlre>.
2108 =item Reversed %s= operator
2110 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2111 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2113 =item Runaway format
2115 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2116 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2117 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2118 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2119 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2121 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2123 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2124 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2125 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2126 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2127 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2128 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2130 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2131 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2132 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2135 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2137 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2138 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2139 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2140 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2141 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2142 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2144 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2145 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2146 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2149 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2151 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2152 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2154 =item Search pattern not terminated
2156 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2157 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2158 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2160 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2162 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2163 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2165 =item select not implemented
2167 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2169 =item sem%s not implemented
2171 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2173 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2175 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2176 that had previously been marked as free.
2178 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2180 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2181 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2183 =item Send on closed socket
2185 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2186 Check your logic flow.
2188 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2190 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2193 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2195 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2196 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2198 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2200 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2201 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2203 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2205 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2210 Also known as "500 Server error".
2212 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2214 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2215 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2216 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2217 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2218 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2219 for more information:
2221 http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/idiots-guide.html
2222 http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/perl-cgi-faq.html
2223 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2224 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2225 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2227 =item setegid() not implemented
2229 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2230 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2233 =item seteuid() not implemented
2235 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2236 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2239 =item setrgid() not implemented
2241 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2242 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2245 =item setruid() not implemented
2247 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2248 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2251 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2253 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2254 because the world might have written on it already.
2256 =item shm%s not implemented
2258 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2260 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2262 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2264 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2266 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2267 put it into the wrong package?
2269 =item sort is now a reserved word
2271 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2272 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2274 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2276 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2277 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2278 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2280 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2282 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2283 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2287 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2288 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2289 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2291 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2293 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2294 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2296 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2298 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2299 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2300 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2301 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2304 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2306 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2307 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2310 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2312 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2316 eval "sub name { ... }";
2319 =item Substitution loop
2321 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2322 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2323 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2324 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2326 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2328 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2329 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2330 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2332 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2334 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2335 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2336 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2338 =item substr outside of string
2340 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2341 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2342 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2343 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2344 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2346 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2348 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2349 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2353 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2355 A keyword is misspelled.
2356 A semicolon is missing.
2358 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2359 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2360 A closing quote is missing.
2362 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2363 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2364 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2365 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2366 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2367 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2368 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2369 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2370 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2372 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2374 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2375 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2378 =item System V IPC is not implemented on this machine
2380 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem", "shm",
2381 or "msg". See L<perlfunc/semctl>, for example.
2383 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2385 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2386 Check your logic flow.
2388 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2390 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2391 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2393 =item tell() on unopened file
2395 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2396 never opened or has since been closed.
2398 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2400 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2401 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2403 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2405 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2406 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2415 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2416 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2418 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2420 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2421 to the probings of Configure.
2423 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2425 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2426 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2427 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2428 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2431 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2433 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2434 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2435 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2437 =item times not implemented
2439 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2440 you're not running on Unix.
2442 =item Too few args to syscall
2444 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2445 system call to call, silly dilly.
2447 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2449 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2450 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2451 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2452 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2455 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2456 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2457 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2458 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2460 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2461 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2463 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2465 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2466 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2467 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2473 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2474 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2477 =item Too many args to syscall
2479 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2481 =item Too many arguments for %s
2483 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2485 =item trailing \ in regexp
2487 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2490 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2492 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2493 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2494 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2496 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2498 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2501 =item truncate not implemented
2503 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2504 Configure knows about.
2506 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2508 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2509 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2510 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2511 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2513 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2515 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal literals
2516 always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2518 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2520 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2522 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2524 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2525 contexts were entered and left.
2527 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2529 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2530 values were temporarily localized.
2532 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2534 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2535 were entered and left.
2537 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2539 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2540 scalars were allocated and freed.
2542 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2544 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2545 another package? See L<perlform>.
2547 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2549 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2550 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2552 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2554 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2555 has since been undefined.
2557 =item Undefined subroutine called
2559 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2560 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2562 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2564 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2565 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2567 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2569 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2570 another package? See L<perlform>.
2572 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2574 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2575 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2577 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2579 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2580 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2582 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
2584 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
2586 =item unmatched () in regexp
2588 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2589 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
2590 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
2592 =item Unmatched right bracket
2594 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly brackets (braces) than opening
2595 ones, so you're probably missing an opening bracket. As a general
2596 rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place you were
2599 =item unmatched [] in regexp
2601 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2602 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2605 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2607 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
2608 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2609 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2611 =item Unrecognized character %s
2613 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2614 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2615 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
2617 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2619 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2620 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2622 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
2624 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2625 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
2626 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
2628 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
2630 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
2631 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
2632 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
2634 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
2636 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
2638 =item Unsupported function fork
2640 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
2642 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
2643 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
2644 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
2646 =item Unsupported function %s
2648 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
2649 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
2651 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
2653 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
2654 least that's what Configure thought.
2656 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
2658 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2659 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
2660 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
2661 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2663 =item Use of "$$<digit>" to mean "${$}<digit>" is deprecated
2665 (D) Perl versions before 5.004 misinterpreted any type marker followed
2666 by "$" and a digit. For example, "$$0" was incorrectly taken to mean
2667 "${$}0" instead of "${$0}". This bug is (mostly) fixed in Perl 5.004.
2669 However, the developers of Perl 5.004 could not fix this bug completely,
2670 because at least two widely-used modules depend on the old meaning of
2671 "$$0" in a string. So Perl 5.004 still interprets "$$<digit>" in the
2672 old (broken) way inside strings; but it generates this message as a
2673 warning. And in Perl 5.005, this special treatment will cease.
2675 =item Use of $# is deprecated
2677 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
2678 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
2680 =item Use of $* is deprecated
2682 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
2683 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
2684 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
2685 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
2687 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
2689 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
2690 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
2692 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
2694 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
2695 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
2697 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
2699 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
2700 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
2701 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
2703 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
2705 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
2706 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
2707 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
2708 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
2710 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
2711 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
2712 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
2713 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
2714 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
2716 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
2717 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
2718 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
2719 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
2721 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
2722 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
2723 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
2725 =item Use of %s is deprecated
2727 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
2728 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
2731 =item Use of uninitialized value
2733 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
2734 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
2735 warning assign an initial value to your variables.
2737 =item Useless use of %s in void context
2739 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
2740 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
2741 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
2742 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
2743 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
2744 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
2748 when you meant to say
2750 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
2752 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
2753 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
2758 when you should have said
2762 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
2763 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
2764 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
2765 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
2766 L<perlref> for more on this.
2768 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
2770 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
2771 valid when C<untie> was called.
2773 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
2775 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
2776 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
2777 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
2778 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
2779 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
2781 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
2783 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
2784 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
2785 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
2786 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
2787 on the front of your variable.
2789 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
2791 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
2792 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
2793 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
2794 the outermost subroutine. For example:
2796 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
2798 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
2799 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
2800 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
2801 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
2802 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
2803 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
2806 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
2807 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
2808 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
2809 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
2811 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
2813 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
2814 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
2816 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
2817 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
2818 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
2819 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
2820 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
2821 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
2823 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
2824 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
2825 will I<never> share the given variable.
2827 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
2828 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
2829 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
2830 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
2833 =item Variable syntax
2835 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2836 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2839 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2841 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2843 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2844 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2847 are supported and installed on your system.
2848 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2850 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2851 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2852 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
2853 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
2854 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
2855 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
2856 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
2857 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
2858 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2860 =item Warning: something's wrong
2862 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
2863 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
2865 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
2867 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
2868 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
2870 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
2872 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
2873 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
2874 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
2875 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
2879 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
2883 but in actual fact, you got
2887 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
2889 =item Write on closed filehandle
2891 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2892 Check your logic flow.
2894 =item X outside of string
2896 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
2897 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2899 =item x outside of string
2901 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
2902 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2904 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
2906 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
2908 =item Xsub called in sort
2910 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
2912 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
2914 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
2915 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
2916 Use a filename instead.
2918 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
2920 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
2921 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
2922 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
2923 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
2925 =item You need to quote "%s"
2927 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
2928 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
2929 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
2930 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
2932 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
2934 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
2935 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2936 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2938 =item \1 better written as $1
2940 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
2941 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
2942 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
2943 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
2944 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
2946 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
2948 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
2949 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
2950 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
2952 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
2954 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
2955 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
2956 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
2957 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
2960 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
2967 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2969 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2970 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2972 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2974 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2982 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
2983 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
2984 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2985 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
2987 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2989 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2990 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
2992 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2994 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2995 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2996 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2997 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"