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 (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
137 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
143 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
145 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
151 or a hash or array slice, such as:
153 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
154 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
156 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
158 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
159 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
162 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
164 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
165 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
166 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
168 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
170 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
171 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
172 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
173 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
174 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
175 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
177 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
179 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
180 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
182 =item assertion botched: %s
184 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
186 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
188 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
190 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
192 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
193 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
194 know which context to supply to the right side.
196 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
198 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
199 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
200 Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
201 created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
202 thread. See L<threads>.
204 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
206 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
207 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
209 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
211 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
212 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
213 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
219 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
221 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
222 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
225 bless $self, "$proto";
227 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
229 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
230 which is not in its key set.
232 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
234 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
235 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
237 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
239 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
240 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
241 outside any of those arenas.
243 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
245 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
246 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
247 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
248 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
250 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
252 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
253 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
254 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
255 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
258 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
260 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
262 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
264 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
265 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
266 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
267 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
268 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
269 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
272 =item Attempt to join self
274 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
275 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
276 to move the join() to some other thread.
278 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
280 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
281 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
282 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
283 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
284 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
287 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
289 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
290 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
291 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
294 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
296 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
297 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
298 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
300 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
303 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
305 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
306 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
307 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
309 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
311 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragam to modify the "locked"
312 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
313 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in the next major
316 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
318 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragam to modify the "unique"
319 attribute on a array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute is has
320 had no no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in the next major
323 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
325 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
326 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
327 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
328 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
330 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
332 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
333 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
334 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
336 =item Bad filehandle: %s
338 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
339 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
340 open(), or did it in another package.
342 =item Bad free() ignored
344 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
345 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
346 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
348 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
349 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
350 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
354 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
356 =item Badly placed ()'s
358 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
359 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
362 =item Bad name after %s::
364 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
365 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
374 $sym = "mypack::$var";
376 =item Bad realloc() ignored
378 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
379 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
380 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
382 =item Bad symbol for array
384 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
385 wasn't a symbol table entry.
387 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
389 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
390 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
393 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
395 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
396 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
398 =item Bad symbol for hash
400 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
401 wasn't a symbol table entry.
403 =item Bareword found in conditional
405 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
406 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
407 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
411 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
414 use constant TYPO => 1;
415 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
417 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
419 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
421 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
422 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
423 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
425 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
427 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
428 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
429 you need to predeclare a package?
431 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
433 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
434 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
437 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
439 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
440 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
441 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
442 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
443 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
445 =item \1 better written as $1
447 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
448 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
449 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
450 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
451 there are more than 9 backreferences.
453 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
455 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
456 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
457 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
459 =item bind() on closed socket %s
461 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
462 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
464 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
466 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
467 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
469 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
471 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
473 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
475 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
478 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
480 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
481 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
482 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
484 =item Callback called exit
486 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
487 exited by calling exit.
489 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
491 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
492 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
493 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
494 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
495 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
496 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
497 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
498 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
500 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
502 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
503 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
504 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
505 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
507 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
509 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
510 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
512 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
514 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
515 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
516 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
517 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
519 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
521 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
522 be directly assigned not.
524 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
526 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
527 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
528 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
530 =item Can't bless non-reference value
532 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
533 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
535 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
537 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
538 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
540 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
542 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
544 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
546 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
547 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
548 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
550 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
552 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
553 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
554 like this will reproduce the error:
557 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
558 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
560 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
562 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
563 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
564 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
565 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
567 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
569 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
570 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
571 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
572 Something like this will reproduce the error:
575 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
576 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
578 =item Can't chdir to %s
580 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
581 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
583 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
585 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
588 =item Can't coerce array into hash
590 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
591 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
592 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
594 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
596 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
597 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
607 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
609 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
611 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
612 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
614 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
616 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
617 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
619 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
621 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
624 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
626 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
627 quotas or other plumbing problems.
629 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
631 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
632 class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration. The semantics may be
633 extended for other types of variables in future.
635 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
637 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
638 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
640 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
642 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
643 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
645 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
647 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
650 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
652 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
653 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
654 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
656 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
658 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
659 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
660 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
662 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
664 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
665 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
666 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
668 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
670 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
671 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
673 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
675 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
676 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
679 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
681 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
682 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
683 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
684 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
686 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
688 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
689 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
690 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
691 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
692 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
693 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
698 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
699 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
700 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
702 =item Can't execute %s
704 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
705 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
707 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
709 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
710 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
712 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
714 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
715 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
716 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
717 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
719 =item Can't find label %s
721 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
722 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
724 =item Can't find %s on PATH
726 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
729 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
731 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
732 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
733 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
735 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
737 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
738 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
739 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
741 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
743 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
744 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
745 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
747 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
749 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
750 example C<\p{Lu}> is all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
751 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
752 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
753 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
758 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
761 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
763 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
766 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
768 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
769 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
770 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
771 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
772 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
773 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
774 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
775 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
776 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
777 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
778 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
779 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
780 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
781 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
782 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
784 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
786 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
787 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
789 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
791 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
792 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
794 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
796 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
797 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
799 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
801 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
802 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
803 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
804 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
806 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
808 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
809 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
810 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
812 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
814 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
817 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
819 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
820 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
821 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
822 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
824 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
826 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
827 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
828 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
829 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
830 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
831 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
833 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
835 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
836 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
837 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
838 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
839 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
840 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
843 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
845 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
846 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
848 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
850 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
851 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
852 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
853 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
854 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
855 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
858 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
860 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
861 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
862 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
865 =item Can't localize through a reference
867 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
868 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
869 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
870 that $ref will still be a reference.
872 =item Can't locate %s
874 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
875 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
876 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
877 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
878 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
879 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
880 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
882 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
884 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
885 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
886 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
887 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
889 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
891 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
892 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
893 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
895 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
897 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
898 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
899 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
901 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
903 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
904 doesn't seem to exist.
906 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
908 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
909 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
911 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
913 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
916 =item Can't modify %s in %s
918 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
919 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
921 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
923 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
926 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
928 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
929 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
931 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
933 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
936 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
938 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
939 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
940 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
941 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
942 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
943 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
945 =item Can't open %s: %s
947 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
948 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
949 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
950 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
953 =item Can't open a reference
955 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
956 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
960 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
961 open is not supported.
963 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
965 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
966 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
967 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
968 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
970 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
972 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
973 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
974 the command line for writing.
976 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
978 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
979 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
980 command line for reading.
982 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
984 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
985 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
986 the command line for writing.
988 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
990 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
991 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
994 =item Can't open perl script%s
996 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
998 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
999 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1000 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1002 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1004 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1005 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1006 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1007 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1010 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1012 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1013 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1014 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1015 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1016 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1017 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1019 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1021 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1022 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1023 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1025 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1027 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1028 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1030 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1032 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1033 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1035 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1037 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1038 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1039 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1041 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1043 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1044 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1047 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1049 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1050 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1052 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1054 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1055 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1056 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1057 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1060 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1062 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1063 open already. Bizarre.
1065 =item Can't take log of %g
1067 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1068 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1069 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1072 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1074 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1075 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1076 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1078 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1080 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1081 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1082 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1086 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1087 as the main Perl stack.
1089 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1091 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1092 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1093 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1094 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1096 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1098 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1099 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1100 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1102 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1104 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1105 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1107 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1109 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1110 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1112 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1114 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1115 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1116 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1118 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1120 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1121 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1122 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1124 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1126 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1129 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1131 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1132 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1133 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1134 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1137 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1139 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1140 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1141 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1142 is inside a big-endian group.
1144 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1146 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1147 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1148 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1149 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1152 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1154 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1155 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1156 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1158 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1160 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1161 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1163 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1165 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1166 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1167 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1169 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1171 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1172 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1173 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1174 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1175 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1178 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1180 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1181 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1182 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1183 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1185 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1187 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1188 references can be weakened.
1190 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1192 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1193 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1194 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1196 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1202 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1203 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1204 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1208 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1211 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1217 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1218 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1221 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1223 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1229 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1230 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1231 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1233 pack("c", $x & 255);
1235 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1238 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1240 (W unpack) You tried something like
1242 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1244 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1245 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1246 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1248 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1250 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1252 (W pack) You tried something like
1254 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1256 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1257 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1258 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1260 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1262 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1264 (W unpack) You tried something like
1266 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1268 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1269 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1270 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1272 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1274 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1276 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1278 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1280 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1281 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1283 =item Code missing after '/'
1285 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1286 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1288 =item %s: Command not found
1290 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1291 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1293 =item Compilation failed in require
1295 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1296 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1297 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1299 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1301 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1302 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1303 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1304 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1305 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1306 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1307 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1308 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1309 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1311 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1313 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1314 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1315 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1316 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1317 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1318 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1319 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1322 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1324 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1325 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1326 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1327 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1328 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1329 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1330 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1333 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1335 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1336 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1337 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1339 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1341 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1342 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1343 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1344 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1347 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1349 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1350 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1351 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1355 =item Constant is not %s reference
1357 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1358 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1359 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1360 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1361 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1363 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1365 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1366 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1367 commentary and workarounds.
1369 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1371 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1372 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1375 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1377 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1378 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1380 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1382 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1384 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1386 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1387 expression compiler gave it.
1389 =item corrupted regexp program
1391 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1394 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1396 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1398 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1400 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1401 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1404 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1406 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1407 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1408 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1409 which case it indicates something else.
1411 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1412 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1414 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1416 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1417 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1418 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1420 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1422 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1423 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1424 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1426 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1428 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1429 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1431 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1433 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1434 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1435 that triggers this error.
1437 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1439 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1440 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1441 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1442 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1443 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1444 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1445 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1447 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1451 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1453 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1454 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1456 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1458 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1460 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1461 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1462 to create a dangling reference.
1464 =item Did not produce a valid header
1468 =item %s did not return a true value
1470 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1471 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1472 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1473 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1475 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1477 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1480 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1482 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1483 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1486 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1488 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1489 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1494 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1495 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1497 =item Document contains no data
1501 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1503 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1504 define a C<$VERSION.>
1506 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1508 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1509 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1511 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1513 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1515 =item do_study: out of memory
1517 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1519 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1521 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1522 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1523 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1524 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1525 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1526 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1527 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1528 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1530 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1532 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1533 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1535 =item dump is not supported
1537 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1539 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1541 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1544 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1546 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1547 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1549 =item elseif should be elsif
1551 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1552 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1553 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1554 unlikely to be what you want.
1558 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1559 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1560 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1562 =item entering effective %s failed
1564 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1565 effective uids or gids failed.
1567 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1569 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1570 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1571 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1573 =item Error converting file specification %s
1575 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1576 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1577 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1578 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1579 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1581 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1583 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1584 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1585 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1587 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1589 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1590 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1591 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1592 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1593 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1594 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1596 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1598 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1599 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1600 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1602 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1604 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1605 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1607 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1610 =item Excessively long <> operator
1612 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1613 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1614 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1615 variable and glob that.
1617 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1619 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1621 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1623 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1625 =item Exiting eval via %s
1627 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1628 goto, or a loop control statement.
1630 =item Exiting format via %s
1632 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1633 goto, or a loop control statement.
1635 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1637 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1638 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1639 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1641 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1643 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1644 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1646 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1648 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1649 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1651 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1653 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1654 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1655 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1656 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1658 =item %s: Expression syntax
1660 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1661 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1663 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1665 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1666 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1667 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1669 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1671 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1672 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1673 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1674 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1675 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1677 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1679 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1680 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1681 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1682 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1684 =item fcntl is not implemented
1686 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1687 PDP-11 or something?
1689 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1691 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1694 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1696 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1697 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1698 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1701 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1703 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1704 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1705 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1706 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1708 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1710 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1711 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1712 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1713 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1714 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1715 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1717 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1719 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1720 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1723 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1725 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1726 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1728 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1730 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1731 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1732 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1735 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1737 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1738 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1739 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1742 =item Format not terminated
1744 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1745 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1747 =item Format %s redefined
1749 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1752 no warnings 'redefine';
1753 eval "format NAME =...";
1756 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1766 (or something like that).
1768 =item %s found where operator expected
1770 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1771 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1772 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1773 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1775 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1777 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1779 =item gethostent not implemented
1781 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1782 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1785 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1787 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1788 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1790 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1792 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1793 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1795 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1797 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1798 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1799 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1801 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1803 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1804 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1805 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1806 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1808 =item glob failed (%s)
1810 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1811 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1812 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1813 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1814 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1815 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1816 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1817 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1818 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1819 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1820 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1822 =item Glob not terminated
1824 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1825 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1826 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1827 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1829 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1831 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1832 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1834 =item goto must have label
1836 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1837 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1839 =item ()-group starts with a count
1841 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1842 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1843 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1845 =item %s had compilation errors
1847 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1849 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1851 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1852 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1853 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1855 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1857 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1858 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1860 =item %s has too many errors
1862 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1863 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1865 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1867 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1868 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1869 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1871 =item Identifier too long
1873 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1874 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1875 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1876 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1878 =item Ignoring %s in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1880 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return multi-char
1881 or zero length sequences. When such an escape is used in a character class
1882 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
1883 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
1885 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1887 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1889 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1891 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1892 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1895 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1897 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1898 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1899 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1900 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1901 to your Perl administrator.
1903 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1905 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1906 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1908 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1910 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1911 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1913 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
1915 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
1917 =item Illegal division by zero
1919 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1920 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1923 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1925 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1926 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1927 number stopped before the illegal character.
1929 =item Illegal modulus zero
1931 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1932 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1934 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1936 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1937 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1939 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1941 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1943 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1945 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1946 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1948 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1950 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1951 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
1953 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1955 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1956 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1957 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1959 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1961 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1962 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1963 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1966 =item (in cleanup) %s
1968 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1969 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1970 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1971 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1972 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1974 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1975 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1977 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
1979 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
1980 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
1981 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
1983 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1985 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1986 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1987 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1989 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1991 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
1992 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
1993 either consume text or fail.
1995 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1998 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2000 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2001 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2002 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2003 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2005 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2007 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2008 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2009 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2010 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2011 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2012 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2013 L<perlsec> for more information.
2015 =item Insecure directory in %s
2017 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2018 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2019 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2022 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2024 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2025 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2026 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2027 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2028 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2030 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2032 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2033 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2034 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2035 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2036 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2037 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2038 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2039 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2042 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2044 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2045 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2046 integers for your architecture.
2048 =item Integer overflow in version
2050 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2051 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2052 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2053 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2054 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2057 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2059 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2060 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2063 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2065 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2066 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2067 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2068 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2069 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2070 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2072 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2074 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2075 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2078 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2080 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2081 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2082 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2083 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2085 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2087 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2088 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2090 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2092 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2093 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2095 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2097 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2098 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2100 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2102 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2103 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2104 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2105 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2106 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2107 escape was discovered.
2109 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2111 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")>
2112 or C<use mro 'foo'>, where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO).
2113 (Currently, the only valid ones are C<dfs> and C<c3>). See L<mro>.
2115 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2117 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2118 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2119 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2120 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2121 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2123 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2125 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2126 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2128 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2130 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2131 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2132 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2135 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2137 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2138 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2139 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2140 list was terminated too soon.
2142 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2144 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2145 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2146 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2149 =item Invalid version format (multiple underscores)
2151 (F) Versions may contain at most a single underscore, which signals
2152 that the version is a beta release. See L<version> for the allowed
2155 =item Invalid version format (underscores before decimal)
2157 (F) Versions may not contain decimals after the optional underscore.
2158 See L<version> for the allowed version formats.
2160 =item ioctl is not implemented
2162 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2163 strange for a machine that supports C.
2165 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2167 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2168 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2170 =item IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
2172 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2173 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2176 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2178 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2179 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2181 =item $* is no longer supported
2183 (S deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2184 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2185 C<//m> and C<//s> regexp modifiers instead.
2187 =item $# is no longer supported
2189 (S deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2190 been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2191 printf/sprintf functions instead.
2193 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2195 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2196 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2199 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2201 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2204 =item junk on end of regexp
2206 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2208 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2210 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2211 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2214 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2216 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2217 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2220 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2222 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2223 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2226 =item leaving effective %s failed
2228 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2229 effective uids or gids failed.
2231 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2233 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2234 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2235 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2237 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2239 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2240 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2243 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2245 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2246 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2248 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2250 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2251 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2252 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2253 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2254 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2255 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2257 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2259 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2260 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2261 instead on the filehandle.)
2263 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2265 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2266 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2267 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2269 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2271 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2272 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2274 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2276 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2277 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2279 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2281 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2288 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2289 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2290 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2291 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2293 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2295 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2296 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2297 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2298 when the function is called.
2300 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2302 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2303 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2305 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2306 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2307 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2309 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2310 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2311 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2314 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2316 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2318 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2319 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2321 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2323 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2324 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2326 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2328 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2329 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2331 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2333 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2334 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2336 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%s) exceeded
2338 (F) Perl aborted due to a too important number of signals pending. This
2339 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2340 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2341 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2342 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2344 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2346 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2347 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2348 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2351 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2353 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2354 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2357 =item % may not be used in pack
2359 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2360 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2361 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2363 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2365 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2366 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2368 =item Method %s not permitted
2372 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2374 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2375 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2376 ended earlier on the current line.
2378 =item Misplaced _ in number
2380 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2381 separate two digits.
2383 =item Missing argument to -%c
2385 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2386 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2388 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
2390 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2391 double-quotish context.
2393 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2395 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2396 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2398 =item Missing command in piped open
2400 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2401 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2404 =item Missing control char name in \c
2406 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2409 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2411 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2412 they have a name with which they can be found.
2414 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2416 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2417 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2418 can vary from one line to the next.
2420 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2422 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2423 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2425 =item Missing right brace on %s
2427 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2429 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2431 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2432 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2435 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2437 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2438 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2439 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2441 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2443 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2444 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2445 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2447 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2450 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2452 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2453 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2456 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2457 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2460 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2462 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2463 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2466 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2468 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2469 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2471 =item Module name must be constant
2473 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2475 =item Module name required with -%c option
2477 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2478 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2479 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2481 =item More than one argument to open
2483 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2484 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2485 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2486 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2488 =item msg%s not implemented
2490 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2492 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2494 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2495 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2497 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2499 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2500 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2501 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2503 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2505 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2508 =item "%s" variable %s can't be in a package
2510 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2511 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2512 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2514 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2516 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2517 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2518 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2519 provided for this purpose.
2521 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2522 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2523 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2524 will not trigger this warning.
2526 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2528 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2529 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2531 =item Negative length
2533 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2534 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2536 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2538 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2539 greater than or equal to zero.
2541 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2543 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2544 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2545 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2547 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2548 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2550 =item %s never introduced
2552 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2553 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2555 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2557 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2558 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2561 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2563 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2564 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2565 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2566 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2568 =item No comma allowed after %s
2570 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2571 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2572 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2574 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2575 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2576 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2577 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2578 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2579 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2580 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2581 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2582 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2583 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2584 this error was triggered?
2586 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2588 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2589 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2590 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2592 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2594 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2595 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2596 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2599 =item No dbm on this machine
2601 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2602 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2604 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2606 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2607 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2608 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2609 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2611 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2613 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2615 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2617 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2618 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2619 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2621 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2623 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2624 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2626 =item No input file after < on command line
2628 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2629 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2630 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2634 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2635 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2637 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2639 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2640 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2641 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2642 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2644 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2646 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2647 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2649 =item No output file after > on command line
2651 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2652 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2653 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2655 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2657 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2658 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2659 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2661 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2663 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2664 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2665 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2667 =item No Perl script found in input
2669 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2670 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2672 =item No setregid available
2674 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2677 =item No setreuid available
2679 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2682 =item No %s specified for -%c
2684 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2685 you haven't specified one.
2687 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2689 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2690 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2691 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2693 =item No such class %s
2695 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but
2696 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2698 =item No such hook: %s
2700 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl
2701 accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks
2703 =item No such pipe open
2705 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2706 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2707 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2709 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2711 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2712 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2713 names on your system.
2715 =item Not a CODE reference
2717 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2718 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2719 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2722 =item Not a format reference
2724 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2725 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2727 =item Not a GLOB reference
2729 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2730 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2731 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2732 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2734 =item Not a HASH reference
2736 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2737 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2738 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2740 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2742 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2743 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2744 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2746 =item Not a perl script
2748 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2749 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2752 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2754 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2755 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2756 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2758 =item Not a subroutine reference
2760 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2761 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2762 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2765 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2767 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2768 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2770 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2772 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2774 =item Not enough format arguments
2776 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2777 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2781 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2782 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2785 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2787 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2788 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2789 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2790 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2791 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2793 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
2795 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
2796 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
2797 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
2799 =item Null filename used
2801 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2802 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2804 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2806 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2809 =item Null picture in formline
2811 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2812 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2813 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2817 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2819 =item NULL regexp argument
2821 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2823 =item NULL regexp parameter
2825 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2827 =item Number too long
2829 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2830 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2831 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2832 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2835 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2837 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2838 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2841 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2843 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2844 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2845 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2847 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2849 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2851 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2852 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2854 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2856 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2857 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2859 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2861 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2862 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2864 =item Offset outside string
2866 (F, W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
2867 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
2868 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
2869 take place when going past the end of the string when either
2870 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
2871 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
2874 =item %s() on unopened %s
2876 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2877 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2878 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2880 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2882 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2883 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2887 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2891 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2893 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
2895 (W io deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
2896 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
2897 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
2900 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
2902 (W io deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
2903 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
2904 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
2907 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
2909 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2910 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2911 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2912 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2914 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2916 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2917 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2918 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2919 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2922 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2924 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2925 in the current lexical scope.
2927 =item Out of memory!
2929 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2930 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2931 no option but to exit immediately.
2933 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
2934 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
2935 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
2936 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
2937 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
2939 =item Out of memory during %s extend
2941 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
2942 the largest possible memory allocation.
2944 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2946 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2947 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2948 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2949 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2951 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2953 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2954 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2957 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2958 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2959 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2960 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2961 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2962 where the failed request happened.
2964 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2966 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2967 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2968 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2970 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2972 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2973 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2976 =item '.' outside of string in pack
2978 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
2979 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
2981 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
2983 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2984 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2986 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
2988 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2989 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
2990 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2992 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2994 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2995 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2996 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2997 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2999 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3001 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3002 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3006 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3007 page. See L<perlform>.
3011 (P) An internal error.
3013 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3015 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3016 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3017 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3018 enter this branch on this platform.
3020 =item panic: ck_grep
3022 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3024 =item panic: ck_split
3026 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3028 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3030 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3031 there are in the savestack.
3033 =item panic: del_backref
3035 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3038 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3040 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3041 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3042 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3043 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3047 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3048 it wasn't an eval context.
3050 =item panic: do_subst
3052 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3055 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3057 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3060 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3062 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3067 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3071 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3072 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3074 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3076 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hashes entries tried repeatedly,
3077 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3078 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3079 adds a new object to the hash.
3081 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3083 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3085 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3087 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3089 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3091 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3095 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3096 it wasn't a block context.
3098 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3100 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3103 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3105 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3106 invalid enum on the top of it.
3108 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3110 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3111 references to an object.
3115 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3117 =item panic: memory wrap
3119 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3121 =item panic: pad_alloc
3123 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3124 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3126 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3128 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3129 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3131 =item panic: pad_free po
3133 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3135 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3137 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3138 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3140 =item panic: pad_sv po
3142 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3144 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3146 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3147 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3149 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3151 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3153 =item panic: pp_iter
3155 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3157 =item panic: pp_match%s
3159 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3162 =item panic: pp_split
3164 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3166 =item panic: realloc
3168 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3170 =item panic: restartop
3172 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3173 didn't supply the destination.
3177 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3178 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3180 =item panic: scan_num
3182 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3184 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3186 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3187 scalar's string buffer.
3189 =item panic: sv_insert
3191 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3194 =item panic: top_env
3196 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3198 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3200 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3203 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3205 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3206 to even) byte length.
3210 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3212 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3214 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3215 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3216 nesting limit is exceeded.
3218 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3221 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3223 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3229 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3231 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3233 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3235 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3236 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3237 redirected it with select().)
3239 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3241 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3242 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3243 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3245 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3247 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3248 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3249 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3250 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3252 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3254 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3255 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3256 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3258 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3260 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3261 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3263 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3265 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3267 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3269 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3271 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3272 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3275 are supported and installed on your system.
3276 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3278 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3279 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3280 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3281 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3282 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3283 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3284 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3285 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3286 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3287 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3289 =item pid %x not a child
3291 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3292 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3293 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3295 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3297 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3299 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3301 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3302 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3303 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3304 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3305 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3307 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3309 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3310 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3312 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3314 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3315 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3316 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3317 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3318 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3319 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3321 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3323 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3324 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3325 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3326 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3327 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3328 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3330 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3332 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3333 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3334 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3335 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3336 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3337 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3339 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3341 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3342 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3343 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3344 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3346 You probably wrote something like this:
3353 when you should have written this:
3360 If you really want comments, build your list the
3361 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3365 'b', # another comment
3368 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3370 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3371 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3372 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3375 You probably wrote something like this:
3379 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3380 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3384 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3386 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3387 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3388 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3389 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3391 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3393 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3394 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3396 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3398 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3399 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3400 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3401 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3403 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3405 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3406 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3407 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3408 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3410 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3412 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3413 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3414 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3415 followed by the word 'bar'.
3417 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3418 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3420 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3421 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3422 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3424 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3426 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3430 is now misinterpreted as
3434 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3435 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3436 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3439 =item Premature end of script headers
3443 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3445 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3446 before now. Check your control flow.
3448 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3450 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3451 before now. Check your control flow.
3453 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3455 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3456 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3457 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3458 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3461 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3463 (W syntax) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3464 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3466 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3468 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3469 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3471 =item Prototype not terminated
3473 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3476 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3478 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3479 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3480 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3482 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3484 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3485 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3486 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3488 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3490 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3491 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3492 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3493 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3494 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3496 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3499 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3501 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3502 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3503 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3504 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3506 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3508 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3509 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3511 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3513 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3514 before now. Check your control flow.
3516 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3518 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3520 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3522 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3524 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3526 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3528 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3530 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3533 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3535 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3536 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3537 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3539 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3541 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3542 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3543 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3545 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3547 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3548 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3551 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3553 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3554 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3555 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3556 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3558 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3559 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3560 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3561 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3563 =item Reference is already weak
3565 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3566 Doing so has no effect.
3568 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3570 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3571 a reference count of other than 1.
3573 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3575 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3576 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3577 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3578 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3580 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3582 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3583 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3584 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3585 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3587 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3590 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3592 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3593 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3594 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3596 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3599 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3601 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3602 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3603 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3604 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3606 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3609 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3611 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3612 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3613 of the C<....> part.
3615 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3618 =item regexp memory corruption
3620 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3621 expression compiler gave it.
3623 =item Regexp out of space
3625 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3628 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
3630 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
3631 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
3632 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
3634 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
3636 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
3637 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
3640 =item Reversed %s= operator
3642 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3643 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3645 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3647 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
3648 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3650 =item Runaway format
3652 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3653 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3654 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3655 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3656 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3658 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3660 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3661 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3662 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3663 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3665 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3667 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3668 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3669 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3670 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3671 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3672 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3673 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3675 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3676 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3677 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3680 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3682 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3683 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3684 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3685 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3686 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3687 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3688 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3690 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3691 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3692 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3695 =item Search pattern not terminated
3697 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3698 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3699 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3701 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
3702 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
3703 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
3704 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
3706 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
3708 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
3711 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
3712 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
3713 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
3714 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
3716 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3718 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3719 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3721 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3723 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
3724 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3726 =item select not implemented
3728 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3730 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3732 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3733 the current implementation.
3735 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3737 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3738 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3740 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3742 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3743 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3745 =item sem%s not implemented
3747 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3749 =item send() on closed socket %s
3751 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3752 before now. Check your control flow.
3754 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3756 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3757 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3760 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3762 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3763 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3764 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3766 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3768 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3769 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3770 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3772 =item Sequence \\%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3774 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
3775 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
3777 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3779 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3780 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3781 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3784 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3786 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3787 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3788 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3791 =item 500 Server error
3797 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3798 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3799 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3800 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3801 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3802 produce a valid header".
3804 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3806 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3807 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3808 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3809 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3810 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3811 Please see the following for more information:
3813 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3814 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3815 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3817 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3819 =item setegid() not implemented
3821 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3822 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3825 =item seteuid() not implemented
3827 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3828 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3831 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3833 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3834 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3837 =item setrgid() not implemented
3839 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3840 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3843 =item setruid() not implemented
3845 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3846 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3849 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3851 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3852 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3853 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3855 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3857 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3858 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3860 =item Setuid script not plain file
3862 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
3863 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
3865 =item shm%s not implemented
3867 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3869 =item !=~ should be !~
3871 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
3872 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
3873 operators: probably not what you intended.
3875 =item <> should be quotes
3877 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3880 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3882 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3883 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3884 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3885 probably not what you had in mind.
3887 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3889 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3892 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3894 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3895 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3897 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
3899 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
3900 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
3903 =item sort is now a reserved word
3905 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3906 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3908 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3910 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3911 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3912 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3914 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3916 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3917 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3919 =item splice() offset past end of array
3921 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3922 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3923 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3924 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3929 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3930 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3931 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3933 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3935 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3936 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3937 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3938 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3941 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3943 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3944 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3946 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s"
3948 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3949 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3950 C<can> may break this.
3952 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3954 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3957 no warnings 'redefine';
3958 eval "sub name { ... }";
3961 =item Substitution loop
3963 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3964 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3965 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3966 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
3968 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3970 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3971 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3972 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3974 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3976 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3977 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3978 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3980 =item substr outside of string
3982 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3983 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3984 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3985 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3986 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3988 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
3990 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
3991 inferior to its current type.
3993 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3995 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3996 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3997 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3998 clustering parentheses:
4000 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4002 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4003 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4005 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4007 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4008 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4009 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4011 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4013 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4014 and effective uids or gids.
4018 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4022 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4024 A keyword is misspelled.
4025 A semicolon is missing.
4027 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4028 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4029 A closing quote is missing.
4031 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4032 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4033 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4034 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4035 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4036 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4037 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4038 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4039 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4042 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4044 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4045 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4048 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4050 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4051 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4052 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4054 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4056 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4058 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4060 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4062 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4064 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4065 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4066 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4067 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4069 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4071 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4072 before now. Check your control flow.
4074 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4076 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4077 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4079 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4081 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4082 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4084 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4086 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4087 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4089 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4091 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4092 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4094 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4096 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4097 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4106 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4107 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4109 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4111 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4112 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4113 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4114 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4117 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4119 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4120 to the probings of Configure.
4122 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4124 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4125 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4126 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4129 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4131 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4133 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4135 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4137 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4138 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4139 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4140 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4141 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4142 target of the change to
4143 %ENV which produced the warning.
4145 =item thread failed to start: %s
4147 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4149 =item times not implemented
4151 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4152 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4154 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4156 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4157 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4158 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4159 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4162 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4163 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4164 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
4165 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
4167 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4168 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
4170 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4172 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4173 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4174 specified an illegal mapping.
4175 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4177 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4179 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4181 =item Too few args to syscall
4183 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4184 system call to call, silly dilly.
4186 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4188 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4189 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option. This is an error because those options
4190 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4192 =item Too late to run %s block
4194 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4195 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4196 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4197 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4200 =item Too many args to syscall
4202 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4204 =item Too many arguments for %s
4206 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4210 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4211 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4215 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4216 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4218 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4220 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4221 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4223 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4225 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4226 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4227 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4229 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4231 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4232 y/// or y[][] construct.
4234 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4236 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4237 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4239 =item truncate not implemented
4241 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4242 Configure knows about.
4244 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4246 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4247 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4248 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4249 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4251 =item umask not implemented
4253 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4254 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4256 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4258 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4260 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4262 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4263 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4265 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4267 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4268 many values were temporarily localized.
4270 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4272 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4273 many blocks were entered and left.
4275 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4277 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4278 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4280 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4282 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4283 another package? See L<perlform>.
4285 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4287 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4288 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4290 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4292 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4293 since been undefined.
4295 =item Undefined subroutine called
4297 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4298 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4300 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4302 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4303 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4305 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4307 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4308 another package? See L<perlform>.
4310 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4312 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4313 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4316 =item %s: Undefined variable
4318 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4319 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4321 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4323 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4324 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4326 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
4328 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
4329 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
4330 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4332 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4334 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4337 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4339 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4340 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4341 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4343 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4345 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4346 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4347 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4348 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4349 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4350 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4352 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4354 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4355 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4356 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4357 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4359 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4361 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4363 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4365 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4366 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4367 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4368 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4369 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4372 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4373 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4375 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4377 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4378 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4380 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4382 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4383 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4385 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4387 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4388 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4390 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4391 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4393 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4395 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4396 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4397 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4401 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4403 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4404 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4405 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4406 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4408 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4410 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4411 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4412 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4413 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4415 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4417 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4418 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4419 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4420 you were last editing.
4422 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4424 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4425 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4426 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4429 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4431 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4432 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4433 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4435 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4437 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4438 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4439 understood literally.
4440 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4441 escape was discovered.
4443 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
4445 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4446 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally.
4448 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4450 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4451 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally.
4452 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4453 escape was discovered.
4455 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4457 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4458 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4461 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4463 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4464 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4465 bad switch on your behalf.)
4467 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4469 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4470 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4471 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4473 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4475 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4477 =item Unsupported function %s
4479 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4480 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4482 =item Unsupported function fork
4484 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4486 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4487 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4488 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4490 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4492 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4493 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4495 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4497 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4498 least that's what Configure thought.
4500 =item Unterminated attribute list
4502 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4503 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4504 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4505 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4507 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4509 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4510 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4511 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4512 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4514 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4516 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4517 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4518 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4520 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4522 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
4523 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4525 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4527 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
4528 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4530 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4532 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
4533 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
4535 =item Unterminated <> operator
4537 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4538 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4539 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4540 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4542 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4544 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4545 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4547 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4549 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4550 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4552 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4554 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4555 See L<Win32> for more information.
4557 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4559 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4560 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4562 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4566 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4568 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4569 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4571 =item Useless localization of %s
4573 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4574 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4575 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4577 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4579 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4580 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4582 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4586 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4588 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4589 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4591 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
4593 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
4594 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
4595 about the /d modifier.
4597 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4599 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4600 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4601 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4602 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4603 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4604 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4609 when you meant to say
4611 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4613 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4614 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4619 when you should have said
4623 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
4624 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
4625 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
4626 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
4627 L<perlref> for more on this.
4629 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
4630 since they are often used in statements like
4632 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
4634 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
4637 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
4639 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
4641 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
4643 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
4647 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
4649 =item Useless use of %s with no values
4651 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
4652 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
4653 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
4654 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
4655 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
4656 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
4658 =item "use" not allowed in expression
4660 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
4661 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
4663 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
4665 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
4666 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
4668 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4670 (D deprecated, W syntax) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
4671 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4673 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
4675 (D deprecated, W syntax) The values you give to a format should be
4676 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
4678 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4680 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4681 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4682 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4685 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4686 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4688 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4690 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4691 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4693 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4695 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4696 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4697 used. (This may change in the future.)
4699 =item Use of freed value in iteration
4701 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
4702 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
4705 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
4707 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
4708 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
4709 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
4710 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
4712 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4714 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4715 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4717 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4719 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4720 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4721 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4723 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4725 (D deprecated, W syntax) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you
4726 clobber a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4727 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4729 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4731 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4732 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4733 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4734 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4737 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4738 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4739 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4740 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4743 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4744 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4745 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4746 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4749 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4750 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4751 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4753 =item Use of octal value above 377 is deprecated
4755 (D deprecated, W regexp) There is a constant in the regular expression whose
4756 value is interpeted by Perl as octal and larger than 377 (255 decimal, 0xFF
4757 hex). Perl may take this to mean different things depending on the rest of
4758 the regular expression. If you meant such an octal value, convert it to
4759 hexadecimal and use C<\xHH> or C<\x{HH}> instead. If you meant to have
4760 part of it mean a backreference, use C<\g> for that. See L<perlre>.
4762 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4764 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4765 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4767 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4769 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4770 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4771 old way has bad side effects.
4773 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4775 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4776 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4777 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4779 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4781 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4782 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4783 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4786 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4788 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4789 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4790 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4792 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4793 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4794 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4795 operators and then you assumably know what you are doing.
4797 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4799 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4800 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4801 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4802 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4803 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4804 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4806 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4808 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4809 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4810 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4811 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4813 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4815 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4816 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4817 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4819 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
4820 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
4821 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
4822 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
4823 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
4824 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
4825 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
4826 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
4828 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4830 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4831 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4832 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4833 be removed in a future version.
4835 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4837 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4838 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4839 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4840 removed in a future version.
4842 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4844 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4845 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4846 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4847 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4848 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4849 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4850 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4852 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4854 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4855 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4856 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4857 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4858 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4859 C<defined> operator.
4861 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4863 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4864 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4865 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4868 =item Variable "%s" is not available
4870 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
4871 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
4872 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
4873 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
4874 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
4875 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
4877 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
4879 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
4880 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
4881 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
4882 now been created and is live:
4884 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
4886 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
4887 gone out of scope, for example,
4895 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
4896 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
4898 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4900 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4901 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4902 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4903 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4904 front of your variable.
4906 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
4908 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4909 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
4911 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4913 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the current
4914 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4915 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4916 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4917 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4919 =item Variable syntax
4921 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4922 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4925 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4927 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4928 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
4930 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
4931 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4932 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4933 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4934 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4935 variable will no longer be shared.
4937 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4938 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4939 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
4940 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4942 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4944 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument
4945 or check that you are using the right verb.
4947 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4949 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
4950 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
4952 =item Version number must be a constant number
4954 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4955 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4958 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
4960 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
4963 =item Warning: something's wrong
4965 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4966 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
4968 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4970 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4971 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4974 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4976 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4977 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4978 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4979 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4983 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4987 but in actual fact, you got
4991 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4993 =item Wide character in %s
4995 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4996 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
4997 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
4998 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
4999 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5000 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5001 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5003 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5005 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
5006 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
5007 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
5008 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
5010 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5012 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5013 before now. Check your control flow.
5015 =item %s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
5017 When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5018 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5019 this encoding, for example
5021 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5023 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5025 =item 'X' outside of string
5027 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5028 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5030 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5032 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5033 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5035 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5037 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5038 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5039 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5042 =item You need to quote "%s"
5044 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5045 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5046 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5047 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5048 what you want, put an & in front.)
5050 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5052 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5053 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5054 Something Very Wrong.
5060 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>.