3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
22 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
23 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
24 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
27 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
28 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
29 Since the messages are listed in alphabetical order, the symbols
30 C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
34 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
36 (W) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
37 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
38 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
39 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
42 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
44 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that
47 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
49 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
50 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
51 if you want to localize a package variable.
53 =item "no" not allowed in expression
55 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
56 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
58 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
60 (W) You seem to have already declared the same global once before in the
61 current lexical scope.
63 =item "use" not allowed in expression
65 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
66 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
68 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
70 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
73 =item / cannot take a count
75 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
76 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
79 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
81 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
82 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
83 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
86 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
88 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
89 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
92 =item / must follow a numeric type
94 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
95 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
98 =item % may only be used in unpack
100 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
101 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
102 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
104 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
106 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
107 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
109 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
111 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
112 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
114 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
116 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
117 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
118 C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood literally.
120 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
122 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
123 by Perl inside character classes. The character was understood literally.
125 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
127 (W) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
128 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true
129 or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string,
130 which is probably not what you had in mind.
132 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
134 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
135 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
136 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
138 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
140 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
141 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
142 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
143 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
144 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
145 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
146 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
148 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
150 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
153 $ref->[12]->["susie"]
155 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
157 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element, such as:
160 $ref->[12]->["susie"]
162 or a hash or array slice, such as:
164 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
165 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
167 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
169 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
170 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
172 =item %s did not return a true value
174 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
175 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
176 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
177 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
179 =item %s found where operator expected
181 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
182 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
183 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
184 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
186 =item %s had compilation errors
188 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
190 =item %s has too many errors
192 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
193 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
195 =item %s matches null string many times
197 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
198 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
200 =item %s never introduced
202 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
203 before it could possibly have been used.
205 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
207 (W) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific handler.
208 That name might have a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it
209 doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute name, instead.
214 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
216 =item %s: Command not found
218 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
219 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
222 =item %s: Expression syntax
224 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
225 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
228 =item %s: Undefined variable
230 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
231 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
236 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
237 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
240 =item (in cleanup) %s
242 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
243 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
244 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
245 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
246 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
249 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
250 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
252 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
254 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
255 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
256 the previous line just because you saw this message.
258 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
260 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
261 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
263 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
265 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
266 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
268 =item C<-p> destination: %s
270 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
271 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
272 redirected it with select().)
274 =item 500 Server error
278 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
280 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
281 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
283 =item @ outside of string
285 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
286 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
288 =item <> should be quotes
290 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
293 =item accept() on closed socket %s
295 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
296 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
298 =item Allocation too large: %lx
300 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
302 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
304 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
305 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
306 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
307 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
308 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
309 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
311 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
313 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
315 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
317 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
318 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
319 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
321 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
323 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
324 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
325 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
328 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
329 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
330 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
331 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
333 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
334 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
335 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">
338 =item Args must match #! line
340 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
341 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
342 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
343 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
345 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
347 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
348 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
349 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
351 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
353 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
354 is now heavily deprecated.
356 =item assertion botched: %s
358 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
360 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
362 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
364 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
366 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
367 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
368 know which context to supply to the right side.
370 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
372 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
373 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
376 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
378 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
379 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
380 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
381 that can no longer be found in the table.
383 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
385 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
386 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
387 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
388 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
391 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
393 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
395 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
397 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
398 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
399 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
400 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
401 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
402 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
404 =item Attempt to join self
406 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
407 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
408 need to move the join() to some other thread.
410 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
412 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
413 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
414 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
415 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
416 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
419 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
421 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
422 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
423 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
425 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
427 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
428 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
429 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
430 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
432 =item Bad filehandle: %s
434 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
435 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
436 did it in another package.
438 =item Bad free() ignored
440 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
441 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
442 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
444 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
445 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
446 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
451 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
453 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
455 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
456 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
459 =item Bad name after %s::
461 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
462 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
471 $sym = "mypack::$var";
473 =item Bad realloc() ignored
475 (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had never been
476 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
477 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
479 =item Bad symbol for array
481 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
482 wasn't a symbol table entry.
484 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
486 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
487 wasn't a symbol table entry.
489 =item Bad symbol for hash
491 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
492 wasn't a symbol table entry.
494 =item Badly placed ()'s
496 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
497 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
500 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
502 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
503 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
504 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
506 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
508 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
509 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
510 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
512 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
514 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
515 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
517 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
519 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
520 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
521 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
522 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
523 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
525 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
527 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
528 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
529 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
531 =item bind() on closed socket %s
533 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
534 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
536 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
538 (W) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
540 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
542 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
544 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
546 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
547 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
548 so it was truncated to the string shown.
550 =item Callback called exit
552 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
553 exited by calling exit.
555 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
557 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
558 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
559 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
560 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
562 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
564 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
565 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
567 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
569 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
570 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
571 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
572 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep().
573 You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect though,
574 because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once.
575 See L<perlfunc/last>.
577 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
579 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
580 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
581 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
582 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
583 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
584 loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
586 =item Can't read CRTL environ
588 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
589 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
590 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
591 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
593 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
595 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
596 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
597 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
598 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
599 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
600 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
602 =item Can't bless non-reference value
604 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
605 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
607 =item Can't break at that line
609 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
610 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
613 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
615 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
616 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
617 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
619 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
621 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
622 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
623 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
624 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
626 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
628 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
629 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
630 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
631 Something like this will reproduce the error:
634 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
635 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
637 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
639 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
640 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
641 Something like this will reproduce the error:
644 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
645 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
647 =item Can't chdir to %s
649 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
650 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
652 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
654 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
656 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
658 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
659 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
669 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
671 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
673 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
674 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
676 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
678 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
679 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
681 =item Can't coerce array into hash
683 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
684 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
685 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
687 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
689 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
690 or other plumbing problems.
692 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
694 (S) Currently, only scalar variables can declared with a specific class
695 qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be extended
696 for other types of variables in future.
698 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
700 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
701 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
703 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
705 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
707 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
709 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
710 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
713 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
715 (S) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
716 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
717 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
719 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
721 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
722 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
724 =item Can't do setegid!
726 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
729 =item Can't do seteuid!
731 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
733 =item Can't do setuid
735 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
736 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
737 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
738 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
739 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
740 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
742 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
744 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
745 without flags is emulated.
747 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
749 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
750 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
752 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
754 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
755 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
757 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
759 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
760 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
761 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
762 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
763 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
764 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
768 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
769 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
770 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
772 =item Can't execute %s
774 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
775 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
777 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
779 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
780 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
781 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
783 =item Can't find %s on PATH
785 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
788 =item Can't find label %s
790 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
791 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
793 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
795 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
796 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
797 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
799 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
801 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
802 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
803 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
807 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
809 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
811 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
812 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
813 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
814 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
815 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
816 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
817 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
818 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
819 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
820 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
821 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
822 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
823 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
824 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
826 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
828 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
829 can't retrieve its name for later use.
831 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
833 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
834 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
836 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
838 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
839 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
840 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
843 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
845 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
846 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
848 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
850 (W) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD signal
851 (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this signal
852 will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
853 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value.
854 This situation typically indicates that the parent program under
855 which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
857 =item Can't localize through a reference
859 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
860 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
861 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
862 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
864 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
866 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
867 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
868 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
871 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
873 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
874 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
875 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
876 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
878 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
880 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
881 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
882 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
883 doing C<make install>.
885 =item Can't locate %s
887 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
888 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
889 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
890 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
891 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
892 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
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) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
906 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
908 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
910 =item Can't modify %s in %s
912 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
913 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
915 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
917 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
918 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
920 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
922 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
925 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
927 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
930 =item Can't open %s: %s
932 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
933 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
934 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
935 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
938 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
940 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
941 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
942 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
943 and then read it in under a different file handle.
945 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
947 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
948 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
949 command line for writing.
951 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
953 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
954 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
956 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
958 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
959 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
962 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
964 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
965 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
967 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
969 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
971 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
973 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
974 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
975 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
976 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
978 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
980 (S) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup file. Perl
981 was unable to remove the original file to replace it with the modified
982 file. The file was left unmodified.
984 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
986 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
987 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
989 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
991 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
992 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
994 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
996 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
999 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1001 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1002 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1004 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1006 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such
1007 as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
1008 This is not allowed.
1010 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1012 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
1013 it open already. Bizarre.
1015 =item Can't swap uid and euid
1017 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
1020 =item Can't take log of %g
1022 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1023 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1024 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
1025 the negative numbers.
1027 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1029 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1030 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1031 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1033 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1035 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1036 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1037 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1041 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1042 as the main Perl stack.
1044 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1046 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
1047 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
1048 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
1049 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1051 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1053 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
1054 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
1055 code calling sv_upgrade.
1057 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
1059 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1060 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1061 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1063 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1065 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1066 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
1067 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1068 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1071 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
1073 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
1074 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
1075 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
1077 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1079 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
1081 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1083 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1084 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1085 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1087 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1089 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
1090 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
1091 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
1092 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
1093 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
1095 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1097 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1098 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1100 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1102 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1103 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1105 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1107 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1108 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1110 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1112 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1113 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1114 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1115 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1118 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1120 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1121 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1122 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1124 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1126 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1127 references can be weakened.
1129 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1131 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1132 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1133 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1135 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1137 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1138 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1140 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1142 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1143 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1144 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1146 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1148 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1151 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1153 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1154 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1155 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .]
1156 are not currently implemented; they are simply placeholders for
1159 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1161 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1162 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1163 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1164 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1165 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1167 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1169 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1170 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1171 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1172 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1173 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1175 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1177 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1179 chmod 777, $filename
1181 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1182 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1184 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1186 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1188 =item Compilation failed in require
1190 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1191 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1192 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1194 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1196 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1197 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1198 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1199 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1200 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1201 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1202 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1203 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1204 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1206 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1208 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1209 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1211 =item Constant is not %s reference
1213 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1214 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1215 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1216 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1217 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1219 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1221 (S|W) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1222 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1225 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1227 (W) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1228 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1231 =item constant(%s): %%^H is not localized
1233 (F) When setting compile-time-lexicalized hash %^H one should set the
1234 corresponding bit of $^H as well.
1236 =item constant(%s): %s
1238 (F) Compile-time-substitutions (such as overloaded constants and
1239 character names) were not correctly set up.
1241 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1243 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1245 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1247 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1249 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1251 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1252 expression compiler gave it.
1254 =item corrupted regexp program
1256 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1257 a valid magic number.
1259 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1261 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1262 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1263 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1264 case it indicates something else.
1266 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1268 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1269 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1270 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1272 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1274 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1275 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1276 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1278 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1280 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1281 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1282 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1284 =item Did not produce a valid header
1288 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1290 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1292 =item Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?
1294 (W) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global variable.
1295 You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which seems superfluous.
1297 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1299 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1300 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1304 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1305 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1307 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1309 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1310 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1311 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1312 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1313 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1314 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1315 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1316 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1319 =item Document contains no data
1323 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1325 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1327 =item do_study: out of memory
1329 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1331 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1333 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1336 =item elseif should be elsif
1338 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1339 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1340 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1341 unlikely to be what you want.
1343 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1345 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1346 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1347 routines has been prematurely ended.
1349 =item entering effective %s failed
1351 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1352 effective uids or gids failed.
1354 =item Error converting file specification %s
1356 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1357 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1358 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1359 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1360 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1362 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1364 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1365 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1366 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1368 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1370 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1371 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1372 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1374 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1376 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1377 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1378 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1379 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1380 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1381 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1383 =item Excessively long <> operator
1385 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1386 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1387 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1388 variable and glob that.
1390 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1392 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1394 =item Exiting eval via %s
1396 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1397 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1399 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1401 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1402 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1403 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1405 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1407 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1408 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1410 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1412 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1413 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1415 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1417 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1418 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1419 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1420 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1422 =item false [] range "%s" in regexp
1424 (W) A character class range must start and end at a literal character, not
1425 another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-" in your false
1426 range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the "-", "\-".
1429 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1431 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1432 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1433 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1434 the Perl source code is distressed.
1436 =item fcntl is not implemented
1438 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1439 PDP-11 or something?
1441 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1443 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1444 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1445 the FileHandle package.
1447 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1449 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1450 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1451 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1452 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1455 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1457 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1458 intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1459 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1460 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1463 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1465 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1466 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1467 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1470 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1472 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1473 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1474 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1477 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1479 (W) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed some
1480 time before now. Check your logic flow. flock() operates on filehandles.
1481 Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the same name?
1483 =item Format %s redefined
1485 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1489 eval "format NAME =...";
1492 =item Format not terminated
1494 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1495 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1497 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1507 (or something like that).
1509 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1511 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1513 =item gethostent not implemented
1515 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1516 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1519 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1521 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1522 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1524 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1526 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1527 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1529 =item Glob not terminated
1531 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1532 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1533 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1534 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1536 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1538 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1539 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1540 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1543 =item goto must have label
1545 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1546 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1548 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1550 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1551 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1552 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1554 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1556 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1557 is now heavily deprecated.
1559 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1561 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1562 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1563 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1565 =item Identifier too long
1567 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1568 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1569 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1570 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1572 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1574 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1575 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1576 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1578 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1580 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1581 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1582 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1585 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1587 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1588 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1589 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1591 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1592 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1593 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1594 properly converting the text file format.
1596 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1597 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1598 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1600 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1601 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1604 =item Illegal division by zero
1606 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1607 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1609 =item Illegal modulus zero
1611 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1612 don't take to this kindly.
1614 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1616 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1618 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1620 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1622 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1624 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1625 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1627 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1629 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1630 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1632 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1634 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1635 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1636 before the illegal character.
1638 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1640 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1641 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1643 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1645 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1646 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1648 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1650 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1651 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1652 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1653 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1654 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1655 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1656 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1658 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1660 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1661 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1662 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1663 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1664 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1665 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1666 for more information.
1668 =item Insecure directory in %s
1670 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1671 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1674 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1676 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1677 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1678 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1679 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1680 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1682 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1684 (W) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1685 as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for your
1686 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1687 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1688 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1689 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1690 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1691 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1694 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1696 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1697 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1698 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1699 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1700 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1701 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1702 and execute the specified command.
1704 =item internal disaster in regexp
1706 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1708 =item glob failed (%s)
1710 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1711 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1712 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1713 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1714 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1715 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1716 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1717 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1718 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1719 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1722 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1724 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1726 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1728 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1729 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1731 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1733 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not recognized
1734 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1736 =item invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
1738 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1739 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1741 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1743 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1744 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1746 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1748 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1749 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute
1750 had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated
1751 too soon. See L<attributes>.
1753 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1755 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1756 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1759 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1761 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1762 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1765 =item ioctl is not implemented
1767 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1768 strange for a machine that supports C.
1770 =item junk on end of regexp
1772 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1774 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1776 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1777 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1778 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1780 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1782 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1783 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1786 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1788 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1789 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1792 =item leaving effective %s failed
1794 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1795 effective uids or gids failed.
1797 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1799 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1800 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1802 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1804 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1805 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context.
1806 See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1808 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1810 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1811 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1813 =item Method %s not permitted
1817 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1819 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1820 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1821 ended earlier on the current line.
1823 =item Misplaced _ in number
1825 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1827 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1829 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1830 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1831 one line to the next.
1833 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1835 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1836 double-quotish context.
1838 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1840 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1841 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1843 =item Missing command in piped open
1845 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1846 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1848 =item Missing operator before %s?
1850 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1851 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1853 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1855 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1856 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1857 you were last editing.
1859 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1861 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1862 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1863 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1865 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1868 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1870 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1872 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1873 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1876 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1878 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1879 be created for some peculiar reason.
1881 =item Module name must be constant
1883 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1885 =item msg%s not implemented
1887 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1889 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1891 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1892 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1894 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1896 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
1897 have a name with which they can be found.
1899 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1901 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1902 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1903 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
1904 provided for this purpose.
1906 =item Negative length
1908 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1909 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1911 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1913 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1914 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1916 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1917 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1921 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1922 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1924 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1926 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1927 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1928 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1931 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1933 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1935 =item No %s specified for -%c
1937 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
1938 you haven't specified one.
1940 =item No comma allowed after %s
1942 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1943 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1944 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1946 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1947 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1948 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1949 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1950 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1951 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1952 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1953 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1954 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1955 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1956 this error was triggered?
1958 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1960 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1961 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1962 want to pipe the output from this command.
1964 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1966 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1967 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1968 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1969 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1970 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1973 =item No dbm on this machine
1975 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1976 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1978 =item No DBsub routine
1980 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1981 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1982 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1983 ordinary subroutine call.
1985 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1987 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1988 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1989 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1991 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1993 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1994 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1995 from which to read data for stdin.
1997 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1999 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
2000 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
2001 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2003 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
2005 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
2006 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
2007 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2009 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2011 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our" declarations,
2012 because that doesn't make much sense under existing semantics. Such
2013 syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2015 =item No Perl script found in input
2017 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2018 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2020 =item No setregid available
2022 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2025 =item No setreuid available
2027 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2030 =item No space allowed after -%c
2032 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow immediately
2033 after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2035 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2037 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2038 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2039 array indices for that to work.
2041 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2043 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
2044 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
2045 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
2046 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2048 =item No such pipe open
2050 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2051 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
2052 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2054 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2056 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
2057 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2059 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2061 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2062 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2063 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
2064 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
2067 =item Not a CODE reference
2069 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2070 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2071 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2072 See also L<perlref>.
2074 =item Not a format reference
2076 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2077 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2079 =item Not a GLOB reference
2081 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
2082 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2083 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
2084 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2086 =item Not a HASH reference
2088 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
2089 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2090 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2092 =item Not a perl script
2094 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2095 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2098 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2100 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
2101 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2102 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2104 =item Not a subroutine reference
2106 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2107 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2108 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2109 See also L<perlref>.
2111 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2113 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2114 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2116 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2118 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
2119 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2120 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2122 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2124 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2126 =item Not enough format arguments
2128 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
2131 =item Null filename used
2133 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
2134 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2136 =item Null picture in formline
2138 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2139 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2140 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2142 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2144 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
2148 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2150 =item NULL regexp argument
2152 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2154 =item NULL regexp parameter
2156 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2158 =item Number too long
2160 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2161 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2162 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2163 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2165 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2167 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
2168 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
2169 on portability concerns.
2171 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2173 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2175 (W) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2176 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2178 =item Offset outside string
2180 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2181 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2182 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2183 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2187 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2191 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2193 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2195 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2196 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2197 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2198 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2199 true. See L<overload>.
2201 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2203 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2204 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2205 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2206 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2207 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2209 =item Out of memory!
2211 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2212 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl
2213 has no option but to exit immediately.
2215 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2217 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2218 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2220 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2222 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2223 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2225 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2226 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2227 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2228 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2229 error is trappable I<once>.
2231 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2233 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2234 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2235 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2236 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2238 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2240 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2241 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2242 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2246 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2249 =item panic: ck_grep
2251 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2253 =item panic: ck_split
2255 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2257 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2259 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2260 are in the savestack.
2262 =item panic: del_backref
2264 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2269 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2270 it wasn't an eval context.
2272 =item panic: do_match
2274 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2276 =item panic: do_split
2278 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2280 =item panic: do_subst
2282 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2284 =item panic: do_trans
2286 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2290 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2294 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2295 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2297 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2299 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2301 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2303 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2305 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2307 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2311 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2312 it wasn't a block context.
2314 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2316 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2318 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2320 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2321 invalid enum on the top of it.
2325 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2327 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2329 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2330 references to an object.
2332 =item panic: mapstart
2334 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2336 =item panic: null array
2338 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2340 =item panic: pad_alloc
2342 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2343 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2345 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2347 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2348 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2350 =item panic: pad_free po
2352 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2354 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2356 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2357 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2359 =item panic: pad_sv po
2361 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2363 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2365 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2366 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2368 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2370 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2372 =item panic: pp_iter
2374 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2376 =item panic: realloc
2378 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2380 =item panic: restartop
2382 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2383 didn't supply the destination.
2387 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2388 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2390 =item panic: scan_num
2392 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2394 =item panic: sv_insert
2396 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2399 =item panic: top_env
2401 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2405 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2409 (P) An internal error.
2411 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2413 (W) You said something like
2419 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2421 Remember that "my", "our" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2423 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2425 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2426 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2427 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2429 =item Permission denied
2431 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2433 =item pid %x not a child
2435 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2436 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2437 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2439 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2441 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2442 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2444 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2446 (W) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2447 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2449 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2451 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2452 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2453 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2454 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2456 You probably wrote something like this:
2463 when you should have written this:
2470 If you really want comments, build your list the
2471 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2475 'b', # another comment
2478 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2480 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2481 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2482 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2485 You probably wrote something like this:
2489 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2490 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2494 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2496 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2497 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2498 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2499 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2501 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2503 (S) The old irregular construct
2507 is now misinterpreted as
2511 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2512 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2513 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2516 =item Premature end of script headers
2520 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2522 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2523 Check your logic flow.
2525 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2527 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2528 Check your logic flow.
2530 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2532 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2533 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2534 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2538 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2540 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2541 or defined with a different function prototype.
2543 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2545 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2546 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2547 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2548 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2550 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
2552 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2553 Check your logic flow.
2555 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2557 (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had already
2560 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2562 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2564 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2566 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2567 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2568 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2570 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2572 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2573 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2575 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2577 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2578 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2580 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2582 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2583 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2584 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2585 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2587 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2588 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2589 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2590 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2592 =item Reference is already weak
2594 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2595 Doing so has no effect.
2597 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2599 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2600 reference count of other than 1.
2602 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2604 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2605 could match an empty string.
2607 =item regexp memory corruption
2609 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2610 expression compiler gave it.
2612 =item regexp out of space
2614 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2616 =item Reversed %s= operator
2618 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2619 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2621 =item Runaway format
2623 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2624 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2625 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2626 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2627 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2629 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2631 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2632 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2633 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2634 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2635 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2636 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2638 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2639 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2640 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2643 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2645 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2646 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2647 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2648 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2649 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2650 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2652 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2653 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2654 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2657 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2659 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2660 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2662 =item Search pattern not terminated
2664 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2665 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2666 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2668 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2670 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2671 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2673 =item select not implemented
2675 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2677 =item sem%s not implemented
2679 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2681 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2683 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2684 that had previously been marked as free.
2686 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2688 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2689 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2691 =item send() on closed socket %s
2693 (W) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2694 Check your logic flow.
2696 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2698 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2701 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2703 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2704 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2706 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2708 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2709 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2711 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2713 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2718 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
2719 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error
2720 text varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen
2721 variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted",
2722 "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and
2723 "Did not produce a valid header".
2725 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2727 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2728 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2729 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2730 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2731 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2732 for more information:
2734 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2735 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2736 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2737 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2738 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2740 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2742 =item setegid() not implemented
2744 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2745 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2748 =item seteuid() not implemented
2750 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2751 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2754 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
2756 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no arguments,
2757 unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process group ID.
2759 =item setrgid() not implemented
2761 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2762 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2765 =item setruid() not implemented
2767 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2768 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2771 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2773 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2774 because the world might have written on it already.
2776 =item shm%s not implemented
2778 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2780 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
2782 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2784 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2786 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2787 put it into the wrong package?
2789 =item sort is now a reserved word
2791 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2792 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2794 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2796 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2797 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2798 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2800 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2802 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2803 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2807 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2808 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2809 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2811 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2813 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2814 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2816 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2818 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2819 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2820 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2821 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2824 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2826 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2827 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2828 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2829 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2830 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2832 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2834 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2835 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2838 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2840 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2844 eval "sub name { ... }";
2847 =item Substitution loop
2849 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2850 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2851 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2852 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2854 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2856 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2857 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2858 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2860 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2862 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2863 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2864 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2866 =item substr outside of string
2868 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2869 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2870 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2871 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2872 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2874 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2876 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2877 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2879 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2881 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2882 real and effective uids or gids.
2886 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2888 A keyword is misspelled.
2889 A semicolon is missing.
2891 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2892 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2893 A closing quote is missing.
2895 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2896 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2897 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2898 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2899 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2900 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2901 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2902 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2903 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2905 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2907 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2908 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2911 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2913 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2914 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2915 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2916 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2918 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
2920 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2921 Check your logic flow.
2923 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2925 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2926 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2928 =item tell() on unopened file
2930 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2931 never opened or has since been closed.
2933 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2935 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2936 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2938 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2940 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2941 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2950 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2951 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2953 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2955 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2956 to the probings of Configure.
2958 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2960 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2961 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2962 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2963 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2966 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2968 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2969 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2970 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2972 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
2974 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2976 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2977 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2978 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2979 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2980 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2981 %ENV which produced the warning.
2983 =item times not implemented
2985 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2986 you're not running on Unix.
2988 =item Too few args to syscall
2990 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2991 system call to call, silly dilly.
2993 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2995 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2996 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2997 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2998 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3001 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3002 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
3003 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
3004 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3006 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3007 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3009 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3011 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3012 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3013 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3019 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3020 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3023 =item Too many args to syscall
3025 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3027 =item Too many arguments for %s
3029 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3031 =item trailing \ in regexp
3033 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
3036 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3038 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3039 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3040 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3042 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3044 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3047 =item truncate not implemented
3049 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3050 Configure knows about.
3052 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3054 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3055 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3056 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3057 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3059 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
3061 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
3062 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
3064 =item umask not implemented
3066 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
3067 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3069 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3071 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3073 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3075 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
3076 contexts were entered and left.
3078 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3080 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3081 values were temporarily localized.
3083 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3085 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
3086 were entered and left.
3088 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3090 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
3091 scalars were allocated and freed.
3093 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3095 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3096 another package? See L<perlform>.
3098 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3100 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
3101 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3103 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3105 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
3106 has since been undefined.
3108 =item Undefined subroutine called
3110 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3111 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3113 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3115 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
3116 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3118 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3120 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3121 another package? See L<perlform>.
3123 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3125 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
3126 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
3128 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3130 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3131 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3133 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3135 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
3137 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3139 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3140 of valid modes: C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>,
3141 C<+L<gt>>, C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3143 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3145 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3146 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3147 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3148 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3150 =item unmatched () in regexp
3152 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3153 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
3154 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3156 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3158 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
3159 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
3160 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
3161 place you were last editing.
3163 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3165 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3166 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
3169 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3171 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
3172 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
3173 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
3175 =item Unrecognized character %s
3177 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3178 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3179 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3181 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3183 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3186 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3188 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3189 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3191 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3193 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3194 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3195 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3197 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3199 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3200 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3201 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3203 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3205 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3207 =item Unsupported function fork
3209 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3211 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3212 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3213 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3215 =item Unsupported function %s
3217 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3218 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3220 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3222 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3223 least that's what Configure thought.
3225 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3227 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3228 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3229 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3230 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3232 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3234 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing an
3235 attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3236 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3237 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3239 =item Unterminated attribute list
3241 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start
3242 of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3243 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute
3244 too soon. See L<attributes>.
3246 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3248 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3249 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3251 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3253 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3254 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3255 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3256 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3258 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3260 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3261 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3263 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3265 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3266 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3268 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3270 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3271 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3272 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3274 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3276 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3277 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3278 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3279 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3281 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3282 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3283 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3284 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3285 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3287 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3288 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3289 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3290 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3292 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3293 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3294 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3296 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3298 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3299 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3300 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3301 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3302 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3303 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3305 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3307 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3308 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3311 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
3313 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3314 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3315 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3317 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3319 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3321 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3323 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3324 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3325 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3326 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3327 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3328 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3332 when you meant to say
3334 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3336 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3337 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3342 when you should have said
3346 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3347 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3348 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3349 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3350 L<perlref> for more on this.
3352 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3354 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3355 valid when C<untie> was called.
3357 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3359 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3360 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3361 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3362 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3363 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3365 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3367 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3368 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3369 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3372 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3374 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3375 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3376 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3377 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3378 on the front of your variable.
3380 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3382 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3383 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3384 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3385 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3387 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3389 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3390 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3391 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3392 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3393 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3394 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3397 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3398 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3399 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3400 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3402 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3404 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3405 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3407 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3408 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3409 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3410 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3411 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3412 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3414 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3415 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3416 will I<never> share the given variable.
3418 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3419 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3420 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3421 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3424 =item Variable syntax
3426 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3427 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3430 =item Version number must be a constant number
3432 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3433 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3436 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3438 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3440 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3441 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3444 are supported and installed on your system.
3445 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3447 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3448 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3449 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3450 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3451 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3452 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3453 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3454 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3455 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3457 =item Warning: something's wrong
3459 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3460 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3462 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3464 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3465 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3467 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3469 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3470 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3471 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3472 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3476 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3480 but in actual fact, you got
3484 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3486 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
3488 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3489 Check your logic flow.
3491 =item X outside of string
3493 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3494 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3496 =item x outside of string
3498 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3499 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3501 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3503 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3505 =item Xsub called in sort
3507 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3509 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3511 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3512 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3513 Use a filename instead.
3515 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3517 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3518 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3519 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3520 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3522 =item You need to quote "%s"
3524 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3525 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3526 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3527 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3529 =item %cetsockopt() on closed socket %s
3531 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3532 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3533 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt> and L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3535 =item \1 better written as $1
3537 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3538 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3539 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3540 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3541 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3543 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3545 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3546 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3547 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3549 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3551 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3552 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3553 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3554 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3557 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3564 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3566 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3567 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3569 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3571 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3579 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3580 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3581 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3582 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3584 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3586 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3587 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3589 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3591 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3592 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3593 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3594 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"