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 (default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
81 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
82 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
83 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
85 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
87 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
88 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
89 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
91 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
93 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
94 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
95 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
96 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
97 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
99 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
106 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
108 (W misc) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and
109 transliteration (tr///) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
110 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
111 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
112 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
113 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
116 =item Args must match #! line
118 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
119 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
120 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
121 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
123 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
125 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
127 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
129 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
136 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
142 or a hash or array slice, such as:
144 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
145 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
147 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
149 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
150 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
153 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
155 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
156 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
157 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
159 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
161 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
162 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
164 =item assertion botched: %s
166 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
168 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
170 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
172 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
174 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
175 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
176 know which context to supply to the right side.
178 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
180 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
181 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
182 outside any of those arenas.
184 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
186 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
187 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
188 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
189 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
191 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
193 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
194 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
195 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
196 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
199 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
201 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
203 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
205 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
206 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
207 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
208 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
209 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
210 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
213 =item Attempt to join self
215 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
216 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
217 to move the join() to some other thread.
219 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
221 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
222 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
223 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
224 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
225 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
228 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
230 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
231 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
232 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
234 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
236 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
237 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
238 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
239 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
241 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
243 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
244 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
245 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
247 =item Bad filehandle: %s
249 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
250 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
251 open(), or did it in another package.
253 =item Bad free() ignored
255 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
256 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
257 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
259 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with "hard"
260 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
261 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
265 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
267 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
269 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
270 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
273 =item Badly placed ()'s
275 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
276 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
279 =item Bad name after %s::
281 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
282 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
291 $sym = "mypack::$var";
293 =item Bad realloc() ignored
295 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
296 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
297 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
299 =item Bad symbol for array
301 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
302 wasn't a symbol table entry.
304 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
306 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
307 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
309 =item Bad symbol for hash
311 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
312 wasn't a symbol table entry.
314 =item Bareword found in conditional
316 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
317 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
318 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
322 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
325 use constant TYPO => 1;
326 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
328 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
330 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
332 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
333 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
334 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
336 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
338 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
339 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
340 you need to predeclare a package?
342 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
344 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
345 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
348 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
350 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
351 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
352 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
353 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
354 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
356 =item \1 better written as $1
358 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
359 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
360 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
361 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
362 there are more than 9 backreferences.
364 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
366 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
367 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
368 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
370 =item bind() on closed socket %s
372 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
373 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
375 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
377 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
379 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
381 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
384 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
386 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
387 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
389 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
391 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
392 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
393 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
395 =item Callback called exit
397 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
398 exited by calling exit.
400 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
402 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
403 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
404 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
405 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
406 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
407 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
408 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
409 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
411 =item / cannot take a count
413 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
414 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
417 =item Can't bless non-reference value
419 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
420 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
422 =item Can't break at that line
424 (S internal) A warning intended to only be printed while running within
425 the debugger, indicating the line number specified wasn't the location
426 of a statement that could be stopped at.
428 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
430 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
431 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
432 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
434 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
436 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
437 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
438 like this will reproduce the error:
441 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
442 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
444 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
446 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
447 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
448 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
449 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
451 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
453 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
454 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
455 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
456 Something like this will reproduce the error:
459 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
460 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
462 =item Can't chdir to %s
464 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
465 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
467 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
469 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
472 =item Can't coerce array into hash
474 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
475 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
476 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
478 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
480 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
481 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
491 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
493 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
495 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
496 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
498 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
500 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
501 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
503 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
505 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
506 quotas or other plumbing problems.
508 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
510 (S) Currently, only scalar variables can declared with a specific class
511 qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be extended
512 for other types of variables in future.
514 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
516 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
517 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
519 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
521 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
522 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
524 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
526 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
529 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
531 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
532 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
533 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
535 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
537 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
538 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
539 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
541 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m
543 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
544 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
546 =item Can't do setegid!
548 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
551 =item Can't do seteuid!
553 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
555 =item Can't do setuid
557 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
558 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
559 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
560 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
561 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
562 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
564 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
566 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
567 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
569 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
571 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
572 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
575 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
577 (W exec) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
578 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
579 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
580 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
581 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
582 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
587 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
588 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
589 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
591 =item Can't execute %s
593 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
594 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
596 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
598 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
599 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
601 =item Can't find label %s
603 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
604 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
606 =item Can't find %s on PATH
608 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
611 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
613 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
614 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
615 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
617 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
619 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
620 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
621 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
623 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
625 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
626 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
627 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
631 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
634 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
636 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
637 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
638 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
639 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
640 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
641 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
642 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
643 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
644 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
645 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
646 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
647 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
648 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
649 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
650 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
652 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
654 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
655 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
657 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
659 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
660 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
662 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
664 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
665 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
667 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
669 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
670 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
671 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
672 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
674 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
676 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
677 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
678 probably don't want to.)
680 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
682 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
683 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
684 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
685 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
687 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
689 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
690 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
691 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
692 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
693 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
694 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
696 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
698 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
699 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
700 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
701 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
702 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
703 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
706 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
708 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
709 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
710 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
713 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
715 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
716 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
717 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
718 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
720 =item Can't localize through a reference
722 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
723 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
724 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
725 that $ref will still be a reference.
727 =item Can't locate %s
729 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
730 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
731 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
732 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
733 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
734 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
735 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
737 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
739 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
740 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
741 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
742 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
744 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
746 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
747 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
748 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
750 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
752 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
753 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
754 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
756 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
758 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
759 doesn't seem to exist.
761 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
763 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
766 =item Can't modify %s in %s
768 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
769 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
771 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
773 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
776 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
778 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
779 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
781 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
783 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
786 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
788 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
789 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
790 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
791 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
792 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
793 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
795 =item Can't open %s: %s
797 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
798 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
799 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
800 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
803 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
805 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
806 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
807 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
808 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
810 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
812 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
813 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
814 the command line for writing.
816 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
818 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
819 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
820 command line for reading.
822 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
824 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
825 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
826 the command line for writing.
828 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
830 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
831 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
834 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
836 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
838 =item Can't read CRTL environ
840 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
841 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
842 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
843 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
846 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
848 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
849 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
850 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
851 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
853 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
855 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
856 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
857 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
858 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
859 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
860 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
862 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
864 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
865 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
866 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
868 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
870 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
871 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
873 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
875 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
876 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
878 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
880 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
881 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
882 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
884 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
886 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
889 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
891 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
892 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
895 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
897 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
898 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
900 =item Can't stat script "%s"
902 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
903 open already. Bizarre.
905 =item Can't swap uid and euid
907 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
910 =item Can't take log of %g
912 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
913 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
914 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
917 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
919 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
920 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
921 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
923 =item Can't undef active subroutine
925 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
926 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
927 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
931 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
932 as the main Perl stack.
934 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
936 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
937 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
938 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
939 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
941 =item Can't upgrade to undef
943 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
944 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
947 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
949 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
950 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
952 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
954 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
955 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
957 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
959 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
960 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
961 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
963 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
965 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
968 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
970 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
971 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
972 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
973 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
976 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
978 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
979 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
980 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
981 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
984 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
986 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
987 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
988 test the type of the reference, if need be.
990 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
992 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
993 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
995 =item Can't use subscript on %s
997 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
998 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
999 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1001 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1003 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1004 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1005 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1006 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1007 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1010 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1012 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1013 references can be weakened.
1015 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1017 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1018 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1019 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1021 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1023 (W unsafe) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1024 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for
1025 example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not
1026 currently implemented; they are simply placeholders for future
1029 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1031 (W regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1032 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future
1033 extensions. If you need to represent those character sequences inside a
1034 regular expression character class, just quote the square brackets with
1035 the backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1037 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1039 (W regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1040 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future
1041 extensions. If you need to represent those character sequences inside a
1042 regular expression character class, just quote the square brackets with
1043 the backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1045 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1047 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. See
1050 =item chmod() mode argument is missing initial 0
1052 (W chmod) A novice will sometimes say
1054 chmod 777, $filename
1056 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number,
1057 equivalent to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in
1060 =item Close on unopened file <%s>
1062 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1064 =item %s: Command not found
1066 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1067 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1069 =item Compilation failed in require
1071 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1072 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1073 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1075 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1077 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1078 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1079 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1080 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1081 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1082 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1083 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1084 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook> for information
1085 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1087 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1089 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1090 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1091 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1093 =item constant(%s): %s
1095 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1096 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1097 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1098 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1101 =item Constant is not %s reference
1103 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1104 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1105 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1106 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1107 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1109 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1111 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1112 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1113 commentary and workarounds.
1115 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1117 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1118 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1121 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1123 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy
1126 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1128 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1130 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1132 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1133 expression compiler gave it.
1135 =item corrupted regexp program
1137 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1140 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1142 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1144 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1146 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1147 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1148 redirected it with select().)
1150 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1152 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1153 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1155 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1157 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1158 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1159 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1160 which case it indicates something else.
1162 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1164 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1165 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1166 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1168 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1170 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1171 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1172 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1174 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1176 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1177 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1178 that triggers this error.
1180 =item Did not produce a valid header
1184 =item %s did not return a true value
1186 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1187 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1188 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1189 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1191 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1193 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1196 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1198 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1199 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1202 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1204 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1205 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1210 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1211 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1213 =item Document contains no data
1217 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1219 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1221 =item do_study: out of memory
1223 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1225 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1227 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1228 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1229 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1230 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1231 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1232 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1233 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1234 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1236 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1238 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1241 =item elseif should be elsif
1243 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1244 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1245 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1246 unlikely to be what you want.
1248 =item entering effective %s failed
1250 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1251 effective uids or gids failed.
1253 =item Error converting file specification %s
1255 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1256 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1257 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1258 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1259 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1261 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1263 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1264 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1265 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1267 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1269 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1270 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1271 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1272 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1273 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1274 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1276 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1278 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1279 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1280 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1282 =item Excessively long <> operator
1284 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1285 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1286 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1287 variable and glob that.
1289 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1291 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1293 =item Exiting eval via %s
1295 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1296 goto, or a loop control statement.
1298 =item Exiting format via %s
1300 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1301 goto, or a loop control statement.
1303 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1305 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1306 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1307 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1309 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1311 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1312 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1314 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1316 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1317 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1319 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1321 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1322 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1323 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1324 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1326 =item %s: Expression syntax
1328 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1329 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1331 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1333 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1334 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1335 routines has been prematurely ended.
1337 =item false [] range "%s" in regexp
1339 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1340 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The
1341 "-" in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider
1342 quoting the "-", "\-". See L<perlre>.
1344 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1346 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1347 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1348 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1349 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1351 =item fcntl is not implemented
1353 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1354 PDP-11 or something?
1356 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1358 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
1359 never initialized. You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call
1360 a constructor from the FileHandle package.
1362 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1364 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1365 to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1366 or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1367 the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1369 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1371 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1372 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1373 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1374 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1376 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1378 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1379 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1380 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1383 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1385 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1386 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1387 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1390 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1392 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1393 some time before now. Check your logic flow. flock() operates on
1394 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1397 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
1399 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
1400 you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
1402 =item Format not terminated
1404 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1405 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1407 =item Format %s redefined
1409 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1413 eval "format NAME =...";
1416 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1426 (or something like that).
1428 =item %s found where operator expected
1430 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1431 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1432 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1433 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1435 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1437 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1439 =item gethostent not implemented
1441 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1442 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1445 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1447 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1448 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1450 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1452 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1453 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1455 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1457 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1458 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1459 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1461 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1463 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1464 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1465 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1468 =item glob failed (%s)
1470 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1471 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1472 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1473 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1474 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1475 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1476 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1477 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1478 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1479 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1480 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1482 =item Glob not terminated
1484 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1485 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1486 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1487 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1489 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1491 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1492 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1494 =item goto must have label
1496 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1497 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1499 =item %s had compilation errors
1501 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1503 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1505 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1506 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1507 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1509 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1511 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1512 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1514 =item %s has too many errors
1516 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1517 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1519 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1521 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1522 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1523 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1525 =item Identifier too long
1527 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1528 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1529 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1530 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1532 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1534 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1536 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1538 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1539 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1542 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1544 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1545 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1546 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1547 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1548 to your Perl administrator.
1550 =item Illegal division by zero
1552 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1553 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1556 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1558 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1559 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1560 number stopped before the illegal character.
1562 =item Illegal modulus zero
1564 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1565 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1567 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1569 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1570 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1572 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1574 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1576 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1578 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1579 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1581 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1583 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1584 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1586 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1588 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1589 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1590 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1592 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1594 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1595 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1596 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1599 =item (in cleanup) %s
1601 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1602 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1603 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1604 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1605 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1607 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1608 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1610 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1612 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1613 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1614 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1615 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1616 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1617 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1618 L<perlsec> for more information.
1620 =item Insecure directory in %s
1622 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1623 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1624 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1626 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1628 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1629 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1630 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1631 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1632 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1634 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1636 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1637 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was
1638 first used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and
1639 ambiguous instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a
1640 backslash to indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array
1641 within the program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will
1642 simply assume that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1644 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1646 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1647 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1648 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1649 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1650 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1651 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1652 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1653 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1656 =item internal disaster in regexp
1658 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1660 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1662 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1663 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1664 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1665 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1666 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1667 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1669 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1671 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1673 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1675 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1676 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1677 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms
1678 and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1680 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1682 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1683 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1685 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1687 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1688 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1690 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1692 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1693 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1695 =item invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
1697 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1698 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1700 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1702 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1703 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1704 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1707 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1709 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1710 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1713 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1715 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1717 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1720 =item ioctl is not implemented
1722 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1723 strange for a machine that supports C.
1725 =item junk on end of regexp
1727 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1729 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1731 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1732 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1735 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1737 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1738 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1741 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1743 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1744 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1747 =item leaving effective %s failed
1749 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1750 effective uids or gids failed.
1752 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1754 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1755 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1758 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1760 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1761 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1762 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1764 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1766 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1774 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1775 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1776 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1777 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
1779 =item %s matches null string many times
1781 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1782 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See
1785 =item % may only be used in unpack
1787 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1788 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1789 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1791 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1793 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1794 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1796 =item Method %s not permitted
1800 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1802 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1803 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1804 ended earlier on the current line.
1806 =item Misplaced _ in number
1808 (W syntax) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1810 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1812 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1813 double-quotish context.
1815 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1817 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1818 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1820 =item Missing command in piped open
1822 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
1823 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
1826 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1828 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
1829 they have a name with which they can be found.
1831 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1833 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
1834 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
1835 can vary from one line to the next.
1837 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
1839 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1840 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1842 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1844 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
1845 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
1848 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
1850 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1851 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
1852 the previous line just because you saw this message.
1854 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1856 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1857 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1858 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1860 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1863 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1865 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
1867 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1868 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1871 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
1873 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
1874 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
1876 =item Module name must be constant
1878 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1880 =item Module name required with -%c option
1882 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
1883 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
1884 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
1886 =item msg%s not implemented
1888 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1890 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1892 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
1893 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1895 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
1897 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
1898 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
1899 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1901 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
1903 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
1904 must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
1905 of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1907 =item / must follow a numeric type
1909 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
1910 follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1912 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
1914 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
1917 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
1919 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
1920 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
1921 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
1923 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1925 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1926 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
1927 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
1928 provided for this purpose.
1930 =item Negative length
1932 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
1933 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1935 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1937 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1938 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1940 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
1941 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1943 =item %s never introduced
1945 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
1946 scope before it could possibly have been used.
1948 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1950 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
1951 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
1952 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
1953 securable. See L<perlsec>.
1955 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1957 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1959 =item No comma allowed after %s
1961 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1962 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1963 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1965 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1966 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1967 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1968 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1969 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1970 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1971 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1972 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1973 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1974 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1975 this error was triggered?
1977 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1979 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
1980 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
1981 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
1983 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1985 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
1986 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
1987 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
1988 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
1989 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
1991 =item No dbm on this machine
1993 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1994 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1996 =item No DBsub routine
1998 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1999 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2000 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2001 ordinary subroutine call.
2003 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2005 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2006 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2007 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2009 =item No input file after < on command line
2011 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2012 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2013 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2017 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2018 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2020 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2022 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2023 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2025 =item No output file after > on command line
2027 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2028 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2029 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2031 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2033 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2034 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2035 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2037 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2039 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2040 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2041 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2043 =item No Perl script found in input
2045 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2046 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2048 =item No setregid available
2050 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2053 =item No setreuid available
2055 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2058 =item No space allowed after -%c
2060 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2061 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2063 =item No %s specified for -%c
2065 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2066 you haven't specified one.
2068 =item No such pipe open
2070 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2071 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2072 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2074 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2076 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2077 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2078 array indices for that to work.
2080 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2082 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2083 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2084 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2085 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2087 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2089 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2090 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2091 names on your system.
2093 =item Not a CODE reference
2095 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2096 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2097 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2100 =item Not a format reference
2102 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2103 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2105 =item Not a GLOB reference
2107 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2108 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2109 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2110 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2112 =item Not a HASH reference
2114 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2115 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2116 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2118 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2120 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2121 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2122 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2124 =item Not a perl script
2126 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2127 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2130 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2132 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2133 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2134 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2136 =item Not a subroutine reference
2138 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2139 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2140 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2143 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2145 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2146 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2148 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2150 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2152 =item Not enough format arguments
2154 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2155 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2159 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2160 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2163 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2165 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2166 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2167 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2168 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2169 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2171 =item Null filename used
2173 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2174 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2176 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2178 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2181 =item Null picture in formline
2183 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2184 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2185 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2189 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2191 =item NULL regexp argument
2193 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2195 =item NULL regexp parameter
2197 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2199 =item Number too long
2201 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2202 about about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2203 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2204 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2207 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2209 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2210 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2213 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2215 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2216 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2217 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2219 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2221 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2223 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2224 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2226 =item Offset outside string
2228 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2229 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2230 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2231 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2235 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2239 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2241 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2243 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2244 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2245 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2246 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2248 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2250 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2251 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2252 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2253 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2256 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2258 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2259 in the current lexical scope.
2261 =item Out of memory!
2263 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2264 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2265 no option but to exit immediately.
2267 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2269 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2270 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2271 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2272 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2274 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2276 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2277 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2280 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2281 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2282 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2283 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2284 is trappable I<once>.
2286 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2288 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2289 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2290 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2292 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2294 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2295 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2298 =item @ outside of string
2300 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2301 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2303 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2305 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2306 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2307 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2308 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2312 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2313 page. See L<perlform>.
2317 (P) An internal error.
2319 =item panic: ck_grep
2321 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2323 =item panic: ck_split
2325 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2327 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2329 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2330 there are in the savestack.
2332 =item panic: del_backref
2334 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2339 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2340 it wasn't an eval context.
2342 =item panic: do_match
2344 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2347 =item panic: do_split
2349 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2351 =item panic: do_subst
2353 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2356 =item panic: do_trans
2358 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational
2363 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2367 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2368 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2370 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2372 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2374 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2376 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2378 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2380 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2384 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2385 it wasn't a block context.
2387 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2389 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2392 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2394 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2395 invalid enum on the top of it.
2397 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2399 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2400 references to an object.
2404 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2406 =item panic: mapstart
2408 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2410 =item panic: null array
2412 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2414 =item panic: pad_alloc
2416 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2417 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2419 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2421 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2422 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2424 =item panic: pad_free po
2426 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2428 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2430 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2431 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2433 =item panic: pad_sv po
2435 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2437 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2439 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2440 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2442 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2444 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2446 =item panic: pp_iter
2448 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2450 =item panic: realloc
2452 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2454 =item panic: restartop
2456 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2457 didn't supply the destination.
2461 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2462 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2464 =item panic: scan_num
2466 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2468 =item panic: sv_insert
2470 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2473 =item panic: top_env
2475 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2479 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2481 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2483 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2489 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2491 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2493 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2495 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2496 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2497 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2499 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2501 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2502 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
2504 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2506 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2508 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2509 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2512 are supported and installed on your system.
2513 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2515 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2516 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2517 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
2518 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
2519 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
2520 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the script
2521 will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you will get
2522 the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really fix the
2523 problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2525 =item Permission denied
2527 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2529 =item pid %x not a child
2531 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2532 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2533 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2535 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2537 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2538 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2540 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2542 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2543 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2544 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2545 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2547 You probably wrote something like this:
2554 when you should have written this:
2561 If you really want comments, build your list the
2562 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2566 'b', # another comment
2569 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2571 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2572 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2573 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2576 You probably wrote something like this:
2580 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2581 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2585 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2587 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2588 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2589 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2590 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2592 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2594 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2595 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2597 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2599 (W deprecated) You have written something like this:
2603 use attrs qw(locked);
2606 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2612 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2613 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2615 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2617 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2621 is now misinterpreted as
2625 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2626 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2627 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2630 =item Premature end of script headers
2634 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2636 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
2637 before now. Check your logic flow.
2639 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2641 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
2642 before now. Check your logic flow.
2644 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2646 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2647 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2648 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2649 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2652 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2654 (S unsafe) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2655 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
2657 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2659 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2660 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2661 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
2662 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2664 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
2666 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
2667 before now. Check your logic flow.
2669 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2671 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2673 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2675 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
2678 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2680 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
2681 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2682 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2684 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2686 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2687 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2689 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
2691 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
2692 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
2695 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2697 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
2698 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
2699 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
2700 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2702 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2703 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2704 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2705 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2707 =item Reference is already weak
2709 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2710 Doing so has no effect.
2712 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2714 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
2715 a reference count of other than 1.
2717 =item regexp memory corruption
2719 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2720 expression compiler gave it.
2722 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2724 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier could
2725 match an empty string.
2727 =item regexp out of space
2729 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
2732 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
2734 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2735 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2737 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
2739 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2740 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2742 =item Reversed %s= operator
2744 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
2745 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2747 =item Runaway format
2749 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2750 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2751 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2752 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2753 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2755 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2757 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
2758 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
2759 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
2760 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
2761 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
2762 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2763 if you're expecting only one subscript.
2765 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2766 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2767 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2770 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2772 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
2773 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
2774 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
2775 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
2776 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
2777 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2778 if you're expecting only one subscript.
2780 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
2781 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
2782 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2785 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2787 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2788 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2790 =item Search pattern not terminated
2792 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2793 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2794 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2796 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2798 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
2799 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2801 =item select not implemented
2803 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2805 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2807 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
2808 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2810 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2812 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
2813 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
2815 =item sem%s not implemented
2817 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2819 =item send() on closed socket %s
2821 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
2822 before now. Check your logic flow.
2824 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2826 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. See
2829 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2831 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2832 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2834 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2836 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2839 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2841 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2842 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2844 =item 500 Server error
2850 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
2851 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
2852 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
2853 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
2854 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
2855 produce a valid header".
2857 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2859 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
2860 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
2861 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
2862 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
2863 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
2864 Please see the following for more information:
2866 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2867 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2868 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2869 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2870 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2872 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2874 =item setegid() not implemented
2876 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
2877 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
2880 =item seteuid() not implemented
2882 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
2883 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
2886 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
2888 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
2889 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
2892 =item setrgid() not implemented
2894 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
2895 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
2898 =item setruid() not implemented
2900 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
2901 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
2904 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
2906 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2907 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2908 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
2910 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2912 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
2913 world, because the world might have written on it already.
2915 =item shm%s not implemented
2917 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2919 =item <> should be quotes
2921 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
2924 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
2926 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
2927 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
2928 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
2929 probably not what you had in mind.
2931 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
2933 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
2936 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2938 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
2939 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
2941 =item sort is now a reserved word
2943 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2944 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2946 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2948 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2949 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2950 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2952 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2954 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2955 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2959 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
2960 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
2961 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
2963 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2965 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
2966 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
2967 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
2968 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
2971 =item Stat on unopened file <%s>
2973 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file
2974 test) on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been
2977 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2979 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2980 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
2981 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
2982 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
2983 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2985 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
2987 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
2988 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
2989 C<can> may break this.
2991 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2993 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2997 eval "sub name { ... }";
3000 =item Substitution loop
3002 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3003 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3004 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3005 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3007 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3009 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
3010 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3011 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3013 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3015 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
3016 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3017 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3019 =item substr outside of string
3021 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3022 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3023 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3024 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3025 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3027 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3029 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3030 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3032 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3034 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3035 and effective uids or gids.
3039 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3041 A keyword is misspelled.
3042 A semicolon is missing.
3044 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3045 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3046 A closing quote is missing.
3048 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3049 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3050 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3051 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3052 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3053 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3054 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3055 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3056 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3059 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3061 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3062 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3067 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3069 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3071 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3072 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3073 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3074 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3076 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3078 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3079 before now. Check your logic flow.
3081 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3083 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3084 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3086 =item tell() on unopened file
3088 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3089 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3091 =item Test on unopened file <%s>
3093 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3094 that isn't open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3096 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3098 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3099 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3108 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3109 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3111 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3113 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3114 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3115 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3116 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3119 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3121 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3122 to the probings of Configure.
3124 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
3126 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3127 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3128 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3131 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3133 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3135 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3136 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3137 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3138 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3139 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3140 target of the change to
3141 %ENV which produced the warning.
3143 =item times not implemented
3145 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3146 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3148 =item Too few args to syscall
3150 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3151 system call to call, silly dilly.
3153 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3155 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3156 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3157 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3158 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3161 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3162 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3163 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3164 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3166 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3167 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3169 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3171 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3172 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3173 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3175 =item Too late to run %s block
3177 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3178 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3179 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3180 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3183 =item Too many args to syscall
3185 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3187 =item Too many arguments for %s
3189 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3193 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3194 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3198 =item trailing \ in regexp
3200 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3201 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3203 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3205 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3206 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3207 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3209 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3211 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3214 =item truncate not implemented
3216 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3217 Configure knows about.
3219 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3221 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3222 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3223 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3224 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3226 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
3228 (W umask) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
3229 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
3231 =item umask not implemented
3233 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3234 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3236 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3238 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3240 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3242 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3243 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3245 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3247 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3248 many values were temporarily localized.
3250 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3252 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3253 many blocks were entered and left.
3255 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3257 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3258 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3260 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3262 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3263 another package? See L<perlform>.
3265 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3267 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3268 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3270 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3272 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3273 since been undefined.
3275 =item Undefined subroutine called
3277 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3278 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3280 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3282 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3283 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3285 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3287 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3288 another package? See L<perlform>.
3290 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3292 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3293 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3296 =item %s: Undefined variable
3298 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3299 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3301 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3303 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3304 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3306 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3308 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3311 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3313 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3314 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3315 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3317 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3319 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3320 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3321 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3322 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3324 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3326 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3327 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3328 first. See L<perlre>.
3330 =item unmatched () in regexp
3332 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3333 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3334 matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3336 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3338 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3339 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3340 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3341 you were last editing.
3343 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3345 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3346 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3347 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3350 =item Unrecognized character %s
3352 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3353 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3354 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3356 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3358 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3359 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3360 understood literally.
3362 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3364 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3365 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated
3366 variable or a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was
3367 understood literally.
3369 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3371 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3374 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3376 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3377 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3380 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3382 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3383 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3384 bad switch on your behalf.)
3386 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3388 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3389 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3390 PROBABLY because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See
3393 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3395 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3397 =item Unsupported function %s
3399 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3400 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3402 =item Unsupported function fork
3404 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3406 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3407 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3408 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3410 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3412 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3413 least that's what Configure thought.
3415 =item Unterminated attribute list
3417 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3418 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3419 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3420 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
3422 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3424 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3425 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3426 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3427 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3429 =item Unterminated compressed integer
3431 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3432 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3433 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3435 =item Unterminated <> operator
3437 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3438 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3439 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3440 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3442 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3444 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3445 still valid when C<untie> was called.
3447 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3449 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3450 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3451 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3452 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3453 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3454 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3459 when you meant to say
3461 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3463 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3464 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3469 when you should have said
3473 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3474 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3475 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3476 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3477 L<perlref> for more on this.
3479 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3481 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3483 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3485 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3486 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3488 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3490 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3491 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3493 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3495 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
3496 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
3497 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3499 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3501 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
3502 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
3503 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
3504 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
3507 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
3508 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
3509 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
3510 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
3513 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3514 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
3515 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
3516 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
3519 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
3520 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3521 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3523 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3525 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3526 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3528 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3530 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
3531 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
3532 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
3533 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3535 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3537 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
3538 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
3539 old way has bad side effects.
3541 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3543 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
3544 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3546 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3548 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
3549 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
3550 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
3551 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
3552 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
3553 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3555 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
3557 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
3558 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
3559 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3561 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
3562 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
3563 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
3564 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
3565 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
3566 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
3569 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3571 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
3572 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
3573 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
3574 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
3575 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
3576 C<defined> operator.
3578 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3580 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
3581 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
3582 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
3585 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3587 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
3588 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3589 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
3590 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
3591 front of your variable.
3593 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
3595 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
3596 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
3597 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
3598 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
3599 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
3601 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3603 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
3604 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
3605 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
3606 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
3608 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3610 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3611 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
3612 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3613 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
3614 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
3615 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
3617 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
3618 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
3619 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
3620 between interferes with this feature.
3622 =item Variable syntax
3624 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3625 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3628 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3630 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
3631 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3633 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3634 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
3635 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
3636 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
3637 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
3638 variable will no longer be shared.
3640 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3641 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3642 will I<never> share the given variable.
3644 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3645 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3646 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
3647 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
3649 =item Version number must be a constant number
3651 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3652 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3655 =item Warning: something's wrong
3657 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3658 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3660 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3662 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
3663 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
3666 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3668 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
3669 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
3670 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
3671 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3675 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3679 but in actual fact, you got
3683 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3685 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
3687 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3688 before now. Check your logic flow.
3690 =item X outside of string
3692 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3693 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3695 =item x outside of string
3697 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3698 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3700 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3702 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
3705 =item Xsub called in sort
3707 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
3710 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3712 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
3713 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3714 Use a filename instead.
3716 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3718 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3719 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3720 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in the
3721 eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3723 =item You need to quote "%s"
3725 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
3726 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
3727 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
3728 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
3729 what you want, put an & in front.)