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 (W,
19 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<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
50 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
52 =item Allocation too large: %lx
54 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
56 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
58 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
61 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
63 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
64 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
65 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
68 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
69 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
70 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
71 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
73 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
74 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
75 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">
78 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
80 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
81 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
82 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
84 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
86 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
87 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
88 '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
90 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
92 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
93 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
94 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
95 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
98 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
105 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
107 (W misc) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
108 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
109 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
110 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
111 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
112 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
114 =item Args must match #! line
116 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
117 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
118 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
119 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
121 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
123 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
125 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
127 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
132 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
134 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element, such as:
139 or a hash or array slice, such as:
141 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
142 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
144 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
146 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
147 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
149 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
151 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
152 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
153 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
155 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
157 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
158 is now heavily deprecated.
160 =item assertion botched: %s
162 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
164 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
166 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
168 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
170 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
171 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
172 know which context to supply to the right side.
174 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
176 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
177 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
180 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
182 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
183 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
184 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
185 that can no longer be found in the table.
187 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
189 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
190 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
191 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
192 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
195 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
197 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
199 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
201 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
202 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
203 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
204 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
205 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
206 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
208 =item Attempt to join self
210 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
211 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
212 need to move the join() to some other thread.
214 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
216 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
217 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
218 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
219 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
220 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
223 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
225 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
226 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
227 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
229 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
231 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
232 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
233 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
234 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
236 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
238 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
239 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
240 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
242 =item Bad filehandle: %s
244 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
245 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
246 did it in another package.
248 =item Bad free() ignored
250 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
251 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
252 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
254 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
255 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
256 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
261 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
263 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
265 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
266 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
269 =item Badly placed ()'s
271 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
272 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
275 =item Bad name after %s::
277 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
278 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
287 $sym = "mypack::$var";
289 =item Bad realloc() ignored
291 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had never been
292 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
293 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
295 =item Bad symbol for array
297 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
298 wasn't a symbol table entry.
300 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
302 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
303 wasn't a symbol table entry.
305 =item Bad symbol for hash
307 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
308 wasn't a symbol table entry.
310 =item Bareword found in conditional
312 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
313 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
314 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
318 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted
321 use constant TYPO => 1;
322 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
324 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
326 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
328 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
329 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
330 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
332 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
334 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
335 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
336 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
338 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
340 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
341 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
343 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
345 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
346 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
347 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
348 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
349 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
351 =item \1 better written as $1
353 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
354 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
355 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
356 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
357 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
359 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
361 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
362 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
363 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
365 =item bind() on closed socket %s
367 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
368 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
370 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
372 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
374 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
376 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
378 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
380 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
381 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
383 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
385 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
386 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
387 so it was truncated to the string shown.
389 =item Callback called exit
391 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
392 exited by calling exit.
394 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
396 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
397 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
398 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
399 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
400 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
401 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
402 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
404 =item / cannot take a count
406 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
407 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
408 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
410 =item Can't bless non-reference value
412 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
413 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
415 =item Can't break at that line
417 (S internal) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
418 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
421 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
423 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
424 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
425 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
427 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
429 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
430 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
431 Something like this will reproduce the error:
434 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
435 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
437 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
439 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
440 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
441 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
442 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
444 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
446 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
447 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
448 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
449 Something like this will reproduce the error:
452 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
453 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
455 =item Can't chdir to %s
457 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
458 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
460 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
462 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
464 =item Can't coerce array into hash
466 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
467 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
468 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
470 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
472 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
473 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
483 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
485 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
487 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
488 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
490 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
492 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
493 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
495 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
497 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
498 or other plumbing problems.
500 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
502 (S) Currently, only scalar variables can declared with a specific class
503 qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be extended
504 for other types of variables in future.
506 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
508 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
509 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
511 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
513 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
514 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
516 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
518 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
520 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
522 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
523 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
526 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
528 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
529 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
530 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
532 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m
534 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
535 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
537 =item Can't do setegid!
539 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
542 =item Can't do seteuid!
544 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
546 =item Can't do setuid
548 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
549 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
550 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
551 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
552 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
553 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
555 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
557 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
558 without flags is emulated.
560 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
562 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
563 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
565 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
567 (W exec) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
568 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
569 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
570 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
571 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
572 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
576 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
577 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
578 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
580 =item Can't execute %s
582 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
583 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
585 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
587 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
588 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
590 =item Can't find label %s
592 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
593 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
595 =item Can't find %s on PATH
597 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
600 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
602 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
603 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
604 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
606 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
608 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
609 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
610 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
612 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
614 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
615 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
616 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
620 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
622 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
624 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
625 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
626 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
627 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
628 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
629 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
630 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
631 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
632 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
633 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
634 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
635 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
636 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
637 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
639 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
641 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
642 can't retrieve its name for later use.
644 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
646 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
647 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
649 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
651 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
652 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
654 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
656 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
657 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
658 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
659 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
661 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
663 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
664 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
666 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
668 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
669 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
670 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
673 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
675 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD signal
676 (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this signal
677 will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
678 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value.
679 This situation typically indicates that the parent program under
680 which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
682 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
684 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
685 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
686 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
687 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep().
688 You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect though,
689 because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once.
690 See L<perlfunc/last>.
692 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
694 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
695 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
696 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
699 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
701 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is
702 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
703 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
704 element directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
706 =item Can't localize through a reference
708 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
709 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
710 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
711 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
713 =item Can't locate %s
715 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
716 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
717 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
718 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
719 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
720 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
723 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
725 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
726 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
727 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
728 doing C<make install>.
730 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
732 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
733 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
734 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
736 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
738 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
741 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
743 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
745 =item Can't modify %s in %s
747 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
748 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
750 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
752 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
755 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
757 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
758 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
760 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
762 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
765 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
767 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
768 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
769 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
770 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
771 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
772 loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
774 =item Can't open %s: %s
776 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
777 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
778 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
779 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
782 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
784 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
785 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
786 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using ">",
787 and then read it in under a different file handle.
789 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
791 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
792 couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on the
793 command line for writing.
795 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
797 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
798 couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the command line for reading.
800 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
802 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
803 couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on the command
806 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
808 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
809 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
811 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
813 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
815 =item Can't read CRTL environ
817 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
818 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
819 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
820 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
822 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
824 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
825 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
826 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
827 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
829 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
831 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
832 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
833 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
834 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
835 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
836 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
838 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
840 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup file. Perl
841 was unable to remove the original file to replace it with the modified
842 file. The file was left unmodified.
844 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
846 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
847 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
849 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
851 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
852 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
854 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
856 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
857 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
858 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
860 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
862 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
865 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
867 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such
868 as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
871 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
873 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
874 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
876 =item Can't stat script "%s"
878 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
879 it open already. Bizarre.
881 =item Can't swap uid and euid
883 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
886 =item Can't take log of %g
888 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
889 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
890 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
891 the negative numbers.
893 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
895 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
896 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
897 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
899 =item Can't undef active subroutine
901 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
902 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
903 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
907 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
908 as the main Perl stack.
910 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
912 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
913 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
914 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
915 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
917 =item Can't upgrade to undef
919 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
920 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
921 code calling sv_upgrade.
923 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
925 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
926 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
928 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
930 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
931 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
933 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
935 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
936 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
937 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
939 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
941 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
943 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
945 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
946 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
947 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
948 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
951 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
953 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
954 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
955 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
956 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
959 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
961 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
962 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
963 test the type of the reference, if need be.
965 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
967 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
968 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
970 =item Can't use subscript on %s
972 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
973 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
974 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
976 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
978 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
979 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
980 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
981 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
982 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
984 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
986 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
987 references can be weakened.
989 =item Can't x= to read-only value
991 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
992 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
993 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
995 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
997 (W unsafe) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
998 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
999 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .]
1000 are not currently implemented; they are simply placeholders for
1003 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1005 (W regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1006 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1007 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1008 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1009 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1011 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1013 (W regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1014 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1015 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1016 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1017 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1019 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1021 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1024 =item chmod() mode argument is missing initial 0
1026 (W chmod) A novice will sometimes say
1028 chmod 777, $filename
1030 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1031 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1033 =item Close on unopened file <%s>
1035 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1037 =item %s: Command not found
1039 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
1040 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1043 =item Compilation failed in require
1045 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1046 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1047 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1049 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1051 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1052 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1053 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1054 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1055 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1056 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1057 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1058 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1059 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1061 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1063 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1064 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1066 =item constant(%s): %s
1068 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define an
1069 overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name specified
1070 in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1071 C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and L<overload>.
1073 =item Constant is not %s reference
1075 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1076 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1077 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1078 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1079 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1081 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1083 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1084 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1087 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1089 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1090 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1093 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1095 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1097 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1099 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1101 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1103 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1104 expression compiler gave it.
1106 =item corrupted regexp program
1108 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1109 a valid magic number.
1111 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1113 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1115 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1117 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1118 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1119 redirected it with select().)
1121 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1123 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1124 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1126 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1128 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1129 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1130 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1131 case it indicates something else.
1133 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1135 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1136 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1137 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1139 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1141 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1142 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1143 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1145 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1147 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label
1148 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1149 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1151 =item Did not produce a valid header
1155 =item %s did not return a true value
1157 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1158 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1159 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1160 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1162 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1164 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1166 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1168 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global variable.
1169 You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which seems superfluous.
1171 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1173 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1174 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1178 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1179 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1181 =item Document contains no data
1185 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1187 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1189 =item do_study: out of memory
1191 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1193 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1195 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1196 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1197 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1198 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1199 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1200 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1201 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1202 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1205 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1207 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1210 =item elseif should be elsif
1212 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1213 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1214 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1215 unlikely to be what you want.
1217 =item entering effective %s failed
1219 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1220 effective uids or gids failed.
1222 =item Error converting file specification %s
1224 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1225 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1226 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1227 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1228 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1230 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1232 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1233 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1234 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1236 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1238 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1239 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1240 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1241 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1242 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1243 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1245 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1247 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1248 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1249 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1251 =item Excessively long <> operator
1253 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1254 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1255 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1256 variable and glob that.
1258 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1260 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1262 =item Exiting eval via %s
1264 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1265 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1267 =item Exiting format via %s
1269 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1270 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1272 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1274 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1275 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1276 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1278 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1280 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1281 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1283 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1285 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1286 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1288 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1290 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1291 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1292 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1293 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1295 =item %s: Expression syntax
1297 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
1298 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1301 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1303 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1304 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1305 routines has been prematurely ended.
1307 =item false [] range "%s" in regexp
1309 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal character, not
1310 another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-" in your false
1311 range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the "-", "\-".
1314 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1316 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1317 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1318 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1319 the Perl source code is distressed.
1321 =item fcntl is not implemented
1323 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1324 PDP-11 or something?
1326 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1328 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1329 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1330 the FileHandle package.
1332 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1334 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1335 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1336 "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If
1337 you intended only to write the file, use ">" or ">>". See
1340 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1342 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1343 intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1344 "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If
1345 you intended only to read from the file, use "<". See
1348 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1350 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1351 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1352 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1355 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1357 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1358 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1359 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1362 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1364 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed some
1365 time before now. Check your logic flow. flock() operates on filehandles.
1366 Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the same name?
1368 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
1370 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
1371 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
1373 =item Format not terminated
1375 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1376 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1378 =item Format %s redefined
1380 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1384 eval "format NAME =...";
1387 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1397 (or something like that).
1399 =item %s found where operator expected
1401 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1402 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
1403 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
1404 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1406 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1408 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1410 =item gethostent not implemented
1412 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1413 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1416 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1418 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1419 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1421 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1423 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1424 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1426 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1428 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did
1429 you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1430 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1432 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1434 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1435 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1436 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1439 =item glob failed (%s)
1441 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1442 and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1443 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1444 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1445 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1446 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1447 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1448 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1449 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1450 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1453 =item Glob not terminated
1455 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1456 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1457 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1458 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1460 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1462 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1463 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1465 =item goto must have label
1467 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1468 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1470 =item %s had compilation errors
1472 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1474 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1476 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1477 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1478 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1480 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1482 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1483 is now heavily deprecated.
1485 =item %s has too many errors
1487 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1488 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1490 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1492 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1493 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1494 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1496 =item Identifier too long
1498 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1499 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1500 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1501 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1503 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1505 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1507 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1509 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1510 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1512 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1514 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1515 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this
1516 error when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason,
1517 your version of Perl appears to have been built without this support.
1518 Talk to your Perl administrator.
1520 =item Illegal division by zero
1522 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1523 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1525 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1527 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1528 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1529 before the illegal character.
1531 =item Illegal modulus zero
1533 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1534 don't take to this kindly.
1536 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1538 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1539 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1541 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1543 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1545 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1547 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1548 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1550 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1552 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1553 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1555 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1557 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1558 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1559 used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1561 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1563 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1564 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1565 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1568 =item (in cleanup) %s
1570 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1571 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
1572 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
1573 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
1574 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
1577 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
1578 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1580 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1582 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1583 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1584 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1585 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1586 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1587 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1588 for more information.
1590 =item Insecure directory in %s
1592 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1593 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1596 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1598 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1599 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1600 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1601 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1602 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1604 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1606 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1607 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1608 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1609 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1610 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1611 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1612 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1614 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1616 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1617 as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for your
1618 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1619 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1620 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1621 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1622 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1623 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1626 =item internal disaster in regexp
1628 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1630 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1632 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1633 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1634 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1635 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1636 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1637 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1638 and execute the specified command.
1640 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1642 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1644 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1646 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
1647 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
1648 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1650 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1652 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1653 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1655 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1657 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not recognized
1658 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1660 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1662 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1663 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1665 =item invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
1667 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1668 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1670 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1672 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1673 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute
1674 had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated
1675 too soon. See L<attributes>.
1677 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1679 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1680 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1683 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1685 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1686 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1689 =item ioctl is not implemented
1691 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1692 strange for a machine that supports C.
1694 =item junk on end of regexp
1696 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1698 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1700 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1701 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1702 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1704 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1706 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1707 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1710 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1712 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1713 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1716 =item leaving effective %s failed
1718 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1719 effective uids or gids failed.
1721 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1723 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1724 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1726 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1728 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1729 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context.
1730 See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1732 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1734 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1742 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
1743 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
1744 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1745 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
1747 =item %s matches null string many times
1749 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1750 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
1752 =item % may only be used in unpack
1754 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1755 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
1756 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1758 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1760 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1761 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1763 =item Method %s not permitted
1767 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1769 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1770 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1771 ended earlier on the current line.
1773 =item Misplaced _ in number
1775 (W syntax) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1777 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1779 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1780 double-quotish context.
1782 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1784 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1785 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1787 =item Missing command in piped open
1789 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1790 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1792 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1794 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
1795 have a name with which they can be found.
1797 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1799 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1800 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1801 one line to the next.
1803 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
1805 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1806 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1808 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1810 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1811 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1812 you were last editing.
1814 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
1816 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1817 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
1818 the previous line just because you saw this message.
1820 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1822 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1823 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1824 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1826 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1829 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1831 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1833 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1834 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1837 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1839 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1840 be created for some peculiar reason.
1842 =item Module name must be constant
1844 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1846 =item Module name required with -M option
1848 (F) The C<-M> option says that Perl should load some module, but you
1849 omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
1852 =item msg%s not implemented
1854 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1856 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1858 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1859 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1861 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
1863 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
1864 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
1865 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1867 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
1869 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
1870 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
1871 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
1872 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1874 =item / must follow a numeric type
1876 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
1877 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
1878 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1880 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
1882 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that
1885 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
1887 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
1888 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
1889 if you want to localize a package variable.
1891 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1893 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1894 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1895 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
1896 provided for this purpose.
1898 =item Negative length
1900 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1901 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1903 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1905 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1906 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1908 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1909 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1911 =item %s never introduced
1913 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
1914 before it could possibly have been used.
1916 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1918 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1919 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1920 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1923 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1925 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1927 =item No comma allowed after %s
1929 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1930 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1931 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1933 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1934 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1935 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1936 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1937 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1938 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1939 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1940 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1941 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1942 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1943 this error was triggered?
1945 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1947 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1948 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1949 want to pipe the output from this command.
1951 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1953 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1954 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1955 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1956 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1957 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1960 =item No dbm on this machine
1962 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1963 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1965 =item No DBsub routine
1967 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1968 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1969 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1970 ordinary subroutine call.
1972 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
1974 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1975 and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't find
1976 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1978 =item No input file after < on command line
1980 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1981 and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1982 from which to read data for stdin.
1986 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1987 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1989 =item "no" not allowed in expression
1991 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
1992 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
1994 =item No output file after > on command line
1996 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1997 and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1998 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2000 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2002 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
2003 and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't find the
2004 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2006 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2008 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our" declarations,
2009 because that doesn't make much sense under existing semantics. Such
2010 syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2012 =item No Perl script found in input
2014 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2015 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2017 =item No setregid available
2019 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2022 =item No setreuid available
2024 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2027 =item No space allowed after -%c
2029 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow immediately
2030 after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2032 =item No %s specified for -%c
2034 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2035 you haven't specified one.
2037 =item No such pipe open
2039 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2040 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
2041 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2043 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2045 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2046 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2047 array indices for that to work.
2049 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2051 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
2052 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
2053 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
2054 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2056 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2058 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
2059 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2061 =item Not a CODE reference
2063 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2064 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2065 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2066 See also L<perlref>.
2068 =item Not a format reference
2070 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2071 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2073 =item Not a GLOB reference
2075 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
2076 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2077 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
2078 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2080 =item Not a HASH reference
2082 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
2083 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2084 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2086 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2088 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
2089 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2090 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2092 =item Not a perl script
2094 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2095 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2098 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2100 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
2101 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2102 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2104 =item Not a subroutine reference
2106 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2107 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2108 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2109 See also L<perlref>.
2111 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2113 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2114 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2116 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2118 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2120 =item Not enough format arguments
2122 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
2127 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2128 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2131 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2133 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2134 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2135 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
2136 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
2139 =item Null filename used
2141 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
2142 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2144 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2146 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
2148 =item Null picture in formline
2150 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2151 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2152 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2156 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2158 =item NULL regexp argument
2160 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2162 =item NULL regexp parameter
2164 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2166 =item Number too long
2168 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2169 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2170 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2171 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2173 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2175 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors. The
2176 octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a future
2179 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2181 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
2182 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
2183 on portability concerns.
2185 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2187 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2189 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2190 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2192 =item Offset outside string
2194 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2195 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2196 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2197 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2201 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2205 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2207 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2209 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2210 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2211 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2212 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2213 true. See L<overload>.
2215 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2217 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2218 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2219 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2220 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2221 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2223 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2225 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before in the
2226 current lexical scope.
2228 =item Out of memory!
2230 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2231 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl
2232 has no option but to exit immediately.
2234 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2236 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2237 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2238 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2239 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2241 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2243 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2244 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2246 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2247 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2248 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2249 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2250 error is trappable I<once>.
2252 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2254 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2255 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2256 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2258 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2260 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2261 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2263 =item @ outside of string
2265 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2266 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2268 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2270 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific handler.
2271 That name might have a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it
2272 doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute name, instead.
2277 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2282 (P) An internal error.
2284 =item panic: ck_grep
2286 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2288 =item panic: ck_split
2290 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2292 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2294 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2295 are in the savestack.
2297 =item panic: del_backref
2299 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2304 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2305 it wasn't an eval context.
2307 =item panic: do_match
2309 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2311 =item panic: do_split
2313 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2315 =item panic: do_subst
2317 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2319 =item panic: do_trans
2321 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2325 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2329 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2330 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2332 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2334 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2336 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2338 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2340 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2342 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2346 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2347 it wasn't a block context.
2349 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2351 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2353 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2355 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2356 invalid enum on the top of it.
2358 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2360 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2361 references to an object.
2365 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2367 =item panic: mapstart
2369 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2371 =item panic: null array
2373 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2375 =item panic: pad_alloc
2377 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2378 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2380 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2382 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2383 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2385 =item panic: pad_free po
2387 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2389 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2391 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2392 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2394 =item panic: pad_sv po
2396 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2398 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2400 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2401 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2403 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2405 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2407 =item panic: pp_iter
2409 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2411 =item panic: realloc
2413 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2415 =item panic: restartop
2417 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2418 didn't supply the destination.
2422 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2423 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2425 =item panic: scan_num
2427 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2429 =item panic: sv_insert
2431 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2434 =item panic: top_env
2436 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2440 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2442 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2444 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2450 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2452 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2454 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2456 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2457 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2458 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2460 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2462 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2463 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
2465 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2467 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2469 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2470 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2473 are supported and installed on your system.
2474 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2476 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2477 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2478 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
2479 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
2480 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
2481 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
2482 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
2483 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
2484 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2486 =item Permission denied
2488 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2490 =item pid %x not a child
2492 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2493 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2494 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2496 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2498 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2499 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2501 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2503 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2504 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2505 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2506 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2508 You probably wrote something like this:
2515 when you should have written this:
2522 If you really want comments, build your list the
2523 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2527 'b', # another comment
2530 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2532 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2533 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2534 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2537 You probably wrote something like this:
2541 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2542 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2546 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2548 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2549 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2550 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2551 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2553 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2555 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2556 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2558 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2560 (W deprecated) You have written something like this:
2564 use attrs qw(locked);
2567 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2573 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2574 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2576 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2578 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2582 is now misinterpreted as
2586 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2587 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2588 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2591 =item Premature end of script headers
2595 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2597 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2598 Check your logic flow.
2600 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2602 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2603 Check your logic flow.
2605 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2607 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2608 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2609 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2610 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2613 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2615 (S unsafe) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2616 or defined with a different function prototype.
2618 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2620 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2621 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2622 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2623 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2625 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
2627 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2628 Check your logic flow.
2630 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2632 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2634 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2636 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had already
2639 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2641 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2642 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2643 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2645 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2647 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2648 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2650 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2652 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2653 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2655 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2657 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2658 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2659 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2660 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2662 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2663 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2664 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2665 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2667 =item Reference is already weak
2669 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2670 Doing so has no effect.
2672 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2674 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2675 reference count of other than 1.
2677 =item regexp memory corruption
2679 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2680 expression compiler gave it.
2682 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2684 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2685 could match an empty string.
2687 =item regexp out of space
2689 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2691 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
2693 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
2694 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2696 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
2698 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
2699 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2701 =item Reversed %s= operator
2703 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2704 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2706 =item Runaway format
2708 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2709 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2710 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2711 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2712 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2714 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2716 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2717 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2718 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2719 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2720 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2721 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2723 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2724 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2725 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2728 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2730 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2731 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2732 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2733 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2734 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2735 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2737 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2738 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2739 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2742 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2744 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2745 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2747 =item Search pattern not terminated
2749 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2750 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2751 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2753 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2755 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2756 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2758 =item select not implemented
2760 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2762 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2764 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2765 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2767 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2769 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2770 that had previously been marked as free.
2772 =item sem%s not implemented
2774 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2776 =item send() on closed socket %s
2778 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2779 Check your logic flow.
2781 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2783 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2786 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2788 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2789 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2791 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2793 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2796 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2798 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2799 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2801 =item 500 Server error
2807 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
2808 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error
2809 text varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen
2810 variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted",
2811 "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and
2812 "Did not produce a valid header".
2814 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2816 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2817 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2818 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2819 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2820 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2821 for more information:
2823 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2824 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2825 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2826 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2827 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2829 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2831 =item setegid() not implemented
2833 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2834 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2837 =item seteuid() not implemented
2839 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't support
2840 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2843 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
2845 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no arguments,
2846 unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process group ID.
2848 =item setrgid() not implemented
2850 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2851 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2854 =item setruid() not implemented
2856 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't support
2857 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2860 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
2862 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did
2863 you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2864 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
2866 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2868 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2869 because the world might have written on it already.
2871 =item shm%s not implemented
2873 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2875 =item <> should be quotes
2877 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
2880 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
2882 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
2883 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true
2884 or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string,
2885 which is probably not what you had in mind.
2887 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
2889 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2891 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2893 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2894 put it into the wrong package?
2896 =item sort is now a reserved word
2898 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2899 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2901 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2903 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2904 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2905 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2907 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2909 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2910 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2914 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2915 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2916 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2918 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2920 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2921 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2922 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2923 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2926 =item Stat on unopened file <%s>
2928 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2929 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2931 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2933 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2934 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2935 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2936 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2937 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2939 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2941 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2942 Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2945 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2947 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2951 eval "sub name { ... }";
2954 =item Substitution loop
2956 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2957 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2958 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2959 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2961 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2963 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2964 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2965 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2967 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2969 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2970 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2971 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2973 =item substr outside of string
2975 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2976 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2977 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2978 fatal if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2979 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2981 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2983 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2984 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2986 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2988 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2989 real and effective uids or gids.
2993 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2995 A keyword is misspelled.
2996 A semicolon is missing.
2998 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2999 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3000 A closing quote is missing.
3002 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3003 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3004 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3005 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3006 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3007 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3008 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3009 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3010 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
3012 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3014 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
3015 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
3020 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3022 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3024 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3025 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3026 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3027 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3029 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3031 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3032 Check your logic flow.
3034 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3036 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
3037 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3039 =item tell() on unopened file
3041 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
3042 never opened or has since been closed.
3044 =item Test on unopened file <%s>
3046 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
3047 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3049 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3051 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
3052 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3061 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
3062 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3064 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3066 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3067 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3068 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3069 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3072 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3074 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3075 to the probings of Configure.
3077 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
3079 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
3080 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
3081 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
3083 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3085 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3087 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
3088 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
3089 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
3090 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
3091 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
3092 %ENV which produced the warning.
3094 =item times not implemented
3096 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
3097 you're not running on Unix.
3099 =item Too few args to syscall
3101 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3102 system call to call, silly dilly.
3104 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3106 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3107 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3108 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3109 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3112 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3113 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
3114 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
3115 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3117 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3118 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3120 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3122 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3123 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3124 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3126 =item Too late to run %s block
3128 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3129 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3130 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using
3131 C<use> instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do>
3132 inside a BEGIN block.
3134 =item Too many args to syscall
3136 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3138 =item Too many arguments for %s
3140 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3144 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3145 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3150 =item trailing \ in regexp
3152 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
3155 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3157 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3158 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3159 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3161 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3163 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3166 =item truncate not implemented
3168 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3169 Configure knows about.
3171 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3173 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3174 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3175 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3176 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3178 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
3180 (W umask) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
3181 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
3183 =item umask not implemented
3185 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
3186 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3188 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3190 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3192 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3194 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
3195 contexts were entered and left.
3197 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3199 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3200 values were temporarily localized.
3202 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3204 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
3205 were entered and left.
3207 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3209 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
3210 scalars were allocated and freed.
3212 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3214 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3215 another package? See L<perlform>.
3217 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3219 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
3220 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3222 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3224 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
3225 has since been undefined.
3227 =item Undefined subroutine called
3229 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3230 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3232 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3234 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
3235 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3237 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3239 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3240 another package? See L<perlform>.
3242 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3244 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
3245 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
3247 =item %s: Undefined variable
3249 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3250 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3253 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3255 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3256 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3258 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3260 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
3262 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3264 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3265 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3266 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3268 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3270 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3271 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3272 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3273 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3275 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3277 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3278 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
3281 =item unmatched () in regexp
3283 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3284 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
3285 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3287 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3289 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
3290 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
3291 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
3292 place you were last editing.
3294 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3296 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
3297 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
3298 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
3300 =item Unrecognized character %s
3302 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3303 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3304 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3306 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3308 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3309 by Perl inside character classes. The character was understood literally.
3311 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3313 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3314 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
3315 C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood literally.
3317 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3319 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3322 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3324 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3325 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3327 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3329 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3330 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3331 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3333 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3335 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3336 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3337 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3339 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3341 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3343 =item Unsupported function %s
3345 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3346 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3348 =item Unsupported function fork
3350 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3352 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3353 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3354 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3356 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3358 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3359 least that's what Configure thought.
3361 =item Unterminated attribute list
3363 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start
3364 of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3365 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute
3366 too soon. See L<attributes>.
3368 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3370 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing an
3371 attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3372 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3373 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3375 =item Unterminated <> operator
3377 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3378 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3379 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3380 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3382 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3384 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3385 valid when C<untie> was called.
3387 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3389 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3390 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3391 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3392 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3393 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3394 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3398 when you meant to say
3400 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3402 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3403 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3408 when you should have said
3412 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3413 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3414 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3415 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3416 L<perlref> for more on this.
3418 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3420 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3422 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3424 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
3425 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3427 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3429 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3430 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3432 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3434 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3435 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3436 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3438 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3440 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are
3441 looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines
3442 to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>),
3443 not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<< $obj->bar() >>).
3445 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3446 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3447 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3448 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3449 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3451 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3452 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3453 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3454 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3456 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3457 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3458 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3460 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3462 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3463 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3465 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3467 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3468 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3469 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3470 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3472 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3474 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3475 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3478 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3480 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3481 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3483 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3485 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3486 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3487 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3488 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3489 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3490 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3492 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
3494 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3495 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3496 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3498 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3500 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3501 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3502 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3503 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3504 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3506 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3508 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3509 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3510 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3513 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3515 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3516 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3517 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3518 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3519 on the front of your variable.
3521 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
3523 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
3524 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
3525 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
3526 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
3529 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3531 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3532 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3533 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3534 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3536 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3538 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3539 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3540 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3541 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3542 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3543 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3546 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3547 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3548 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3549 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3551 =item Variable syntax
3553 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3554 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3557 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3559 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3560 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3562 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3563 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3564 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3565 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3566 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3567 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3569 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3570 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3571 will I<never> share the given variable.
3573 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3574 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3575 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3576 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3579 =item Version number must be a constant number
3581 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3582 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3585 =item Warning: something's wrong
3587 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3588 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3590 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3592 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3593 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3595 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3597 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3598 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3599 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3600 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3604 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3608 but in actual fact, you got
3612 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3614 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
3616 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3617 Check your logic flow.
3619 =item X outside of string
3621 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3622 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3624 =item x outside of string
3626 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3627 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3629 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3631 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3633 =item Xsub called in sort
3635 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3637 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3639 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3640 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3641 Use a filename instead.
3643 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3645 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3646 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3647 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3648 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3650 =item You need to quote "%s"
3652 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3653 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3654 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3655 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)