3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
22 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
23 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
24 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
27 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
28 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
29 Since the messages are listed in alphabetical order, the symbols
30 C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
34 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
36 (W) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
37 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
38 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
39 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
42 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
44 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that
47 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
49 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
50 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
51 if you want to localize a package variable.
53 =item "no" not allowed in expression
55 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
56 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
58 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
60 (W) You seem to have already declared the same global once before in the
61 current lexical scope.
63 =item "use" not allowed in expression
65 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
66 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
68 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
70 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
73 =item / cannot take a count
75 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
76 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
79 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
81 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
82 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
83 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
86 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
88 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
89 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
92 =item / must follow a numeric type
94 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
95 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
98 =item % may only be used in unpack
100 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
101 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
102 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
104 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
106 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
107 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
109 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
111 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
112 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
114 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
116 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
117 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
118 C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood literally.
120 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
122 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
123 by Perl inside character classes. The character was understood literally.
125 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
127 (W) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
128 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true
129 or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string,
130 which is probably not what you had in mind.
132 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
134 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
135 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
136 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
138 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
140 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
141 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
142 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
143 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
144 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
145 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
146 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
148 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
150 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
153 $ref->[12]->["susie"]
155 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
157 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element, such as:
160 $ref->[12]->["susie"]
162 or a hash or array slice, such as:
164 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
165 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
167 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
169 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
170 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
172 =item %s did not return a true value
174 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
175 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
176 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
177 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
179 =item %s found where operator expected
181 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
182 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
183 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
184 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
186 =item %s had compilation errors
188 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
190 =item %s has too many errors
192 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
193 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
195 =item %s matches null string many times
197 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
198 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
200 =item %s never introduced
202 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
203 before it could possibly have been used.
205 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
207 (W) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific handler.
208 That name might have a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it
209 doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute name, instead.
214 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
216 =item %s: Command not found
218 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
219 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
222 =item %s: Expression syntax
224 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
225 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
228 =item %s: Undefined variable
230 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
231 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
236 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
237 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
240 =item (in cleanup) %s
242 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
243 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
244 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
245 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
246 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
249 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
250 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
252 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
254 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
255 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
256 the previous line just because you saw this message.
258 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
260 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
261 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
263 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
265 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
266 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
268 =item C<-p> destination: %s
270 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
271 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
272 redirected it with select().)
274 =item 500 Server error
278 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
280 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
281 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
283 =item @ outside of string
285 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
286 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
288 =item <> should be quotes
290 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
293 =item accept() on closed socket %s
295 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
296 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
298 =item Allocation too large: %lx
300 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
302 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
304 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
305 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
306 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
307 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
308 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
309 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
311 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
313 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
315 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
317 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
318 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
319 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
321 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
323 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
324 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
325 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
328 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
329 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
330 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
331 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
333 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
334 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
335 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">
338 =item Args must match #! line
340 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
341 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
342 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
343 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
345 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
347 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
348 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
349 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
351 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
353 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
354 is now heavily deprecated.
356 =item assertion botched: %s
358 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
360 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
362 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
364 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
366 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
367 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
368 know which context to supply to the right side.
370 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
372 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
373 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
376 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
378 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
379 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
380 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
381 that can no longer be found in the table.
383 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
385 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
386 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
387 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
388 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
391 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
393 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
395 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
397 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
398 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
399 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
400 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
401 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
402 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
404 =item Attempt to join self
406 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
407 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
408 need to move the join() to some other thread.
410 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
412 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
413 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
414 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
415 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
416 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
419 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
421 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
422 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
423 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
425 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
427 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
428 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
429 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
430 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
432 =item Bad filehandle: %s
434 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
435 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
436 did it in another package.
438 =item Bad free() ignored
440 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
441 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
442 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
444 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
445 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
446 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
451 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
453 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
455 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
456 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
459 =item Bad name after %s::
461 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
462 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
471 $sym = "mypack::$var";
473 =item Bad realloc() ignored
475 (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had never been
476 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
477 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
479 =item Bad symbol for array
481 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
482 wasn't a symbol table entry.
484 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
486 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
487 wasn't a symbol table entry.
489 =item Bad symbol for hash
491 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
492 wasn't a symbol table entry.
494 =item Badly placed ()'s
496 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
497 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
500 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
502 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
503 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
504 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
506 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
508 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
509 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
510 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
512 =item Bareword found in conditional
514 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
515 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
516 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
520 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted
523 use constant TYPO => 1;
524 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
526 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
528 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
530 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
531 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
533 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
535 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
536 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
537 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
538 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
539 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
541 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
543 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
544 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
545 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
547 =item bind() on closed socket %s
549 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
550 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
552 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
554 (W) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
556 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
558 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
560 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
562 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
563 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
564 so it was truncated to the string shown.
566 =item Callback called exit
568 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
569 exited by calling exit.
571 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
573 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
574 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
575 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
576 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
578 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
580 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
581 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
583 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
585 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
586 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
587 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
588 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep().
589 You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect though,
590 because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once.
591 See L<perlfunc/last>.
593 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
595 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
596 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
597 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
598 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
599 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
600 loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
602 =item Can't read CRTL environ
604 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
605 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
606 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
607 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
609 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
611 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
612 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
613 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
614 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
615 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
616 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
618 =item Can't bless non-reference value
620 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
621 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
623 =item Can't break at that line
625 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
626 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
629 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
631 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
632 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
633 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
635 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
637 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
638 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
639 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
640 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
642 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
644 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
645 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
646 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
647 Something like this will reproduce the error:
650 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
651 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
653 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
655 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
656 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
657 Something like this will reproduce the error:
660 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
661 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
663 =item Can't chdir to %s
665 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
666 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
668 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
670 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
672 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
674 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
675 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
685 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
687 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
689 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
690 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
692 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
694 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
695 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
697 =item Can't coerce array into hash
699 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
700 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
701 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
703 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
705 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
706 or other plumbing problems.
708 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
710 (S) Currently, only scalar variables can declared with a specific class
711 qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be extended
712 for other types of variables in future.
714 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
716 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
717 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
719 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
721 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
723 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
725 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
726 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
729 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
731 (S) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
732 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
733 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
735 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
737 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
738 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
740 =item Can't do setegid!
742 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
745 =item Can't do seteuid!
747 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
749 =item Can't do setuid
751 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
752 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
753 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
754 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
755 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
756 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
758 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
760 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
761 without flags is emulated.
763 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
765 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
766 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
768 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
770 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
771 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
773 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
775 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
776 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
777 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
778 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
779 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
780 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
784 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
785 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
786 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
788 =item Can't execute %s
790 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
791 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
793 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
795 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
796 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
797 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
799 =item Can't find %s on PATH
801 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
804 =item Can't find label %s
806 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
807 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
809 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
811 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
812 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
813 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
815 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
817 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
818 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
819 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
823 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
825 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
827 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
828 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
829 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
830 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
831 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
832 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
833 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
834 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
835 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
836 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
837 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
838 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
839 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
840 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
842 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
844 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
845 can't retrieve its name for later use.
847 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
849 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
850 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
852 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
854 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
855 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
856 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
859 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
861 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
862 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
864 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
866 (W) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD signal
867 (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this signal
868 will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
869 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value.
870 This situation typically indicates that the parent program under
871 which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
873 =item Can't localize through a reference
875 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
876 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
877 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
878 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
880 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
882 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
883 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
884 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
887 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
889 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
890 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
891 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
892 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
894 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
896 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
897 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
898 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
899 doing C<make install>.
901 =item Can't locate %s
903 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
904 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
905 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
906 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
907 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
908 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
911 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
913 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
914 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
915 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
917 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
919 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
922 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
924 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
926 =item Can't modify %s in %s
928 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
929 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
931 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
933 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
934 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
936 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
938 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
941 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
943 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
946 =item Can't open %s: %s
948 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
949 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
950 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
951 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
954 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
956 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
957 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
958 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
959 and then read it in under a different file handle.
961 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
963 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
964 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
965 command line for writing.
967 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
969 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
970 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
972 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
974 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
975 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
978 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
980 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
981 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
983 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
985 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
987 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
989 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
990 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
991 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
992 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
994 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
996 (S) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup file. Perl
997 was unable to remove the original file to replace it with the modified
998 file. The file was left unmodified.
1000 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1002 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1003 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1005 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1007 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
1008 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1010 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
1012 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
1015 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1017 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1018 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1020 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1022 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such
1023 as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
1024 This is not allowed.
1026 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1028 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
1029 it open already. Bizarre.
1031 =item Can't swap uid and euid
1033 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
1036 =item Can't take log of %g
1038 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1039 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1040 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
1041 the negative numbers.
1043 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1045 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1046 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1047 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1049 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1051 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1052 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1053 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1057 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1058 as the main Perl stack.
1060 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1062 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
1063 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
1064 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
1065 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1067 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1069 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
1070 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
1071 code calling sv_upgrade.
1073 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
1075 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1076 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1077 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1079 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1081 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1082 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
1083 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1084 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1087 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
1089 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
1090 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
1091 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
1093 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1095 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
1097 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1099 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1100 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1101 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1103 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1105 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
1106 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
1107 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
1108 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
1109 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
1111 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1113 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1114 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1116 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1118 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1119 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1121 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1123 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1124 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1126 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1128 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1129 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1130 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1131 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1134 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1136 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1137 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1138 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1140 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1142 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1143 references can be weakened.
1145 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1147 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1148 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1149 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1151 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1153 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1154 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1156 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1158 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1159 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1160 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1162 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1164 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1167 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1169 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1170 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1171 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .]
1172 are not currently implemented; they are simply placeholders for
1175 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1177 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1178 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1179 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1180 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1181 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1183 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1185 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1186 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1187 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1188 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1189 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1191 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1193 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1195 chmod 777, $filename
1197 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1198 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1200 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1202 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1204 =item Compilation failed in require
1206 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1207 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1208 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1210 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1212 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1213 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1214 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1215 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1216 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1217 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1218 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1219 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1220 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1222 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1224 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1225 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1227 =item Constant is not %s reference
1229 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1230 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1231 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1232 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1233 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1235 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1237 (S|W) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1238 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1241 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1243 (W) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1244 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1247 =item constant(%s): %%^H is not localized
1249 (F) When setting compile-time-lexicalized hash %^H one should set the
1250 corresponding bit of $^H as well.
1252 =item constant(%s): %s
1254 (F) Compile-time-substitutions (such as overloaded constants and
1255 character names) were not correctly set up.
1257 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1259 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1261 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1263 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1265 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1267 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1268 expression compiler gave it.
1270 =item corrupted regexp program
1272 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1273 a valid magic number.
1275 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1277 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1278 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1279 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1280 case it indicates something else.
1282 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1284 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1285 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1286 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1288 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1290 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1291 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1292 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1294 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1296 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1297 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1298 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1300 =item Did not produce a valid header
1304 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1306 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1308 =item Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?
1310 (W) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global variable.
1311 You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which seems superfluous.
1313 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1315 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1316 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1320 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1321 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1323 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1325 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1326 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1327 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1328 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1329 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1330 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1331 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1332 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1335 =item Document contains no data
1339 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1341 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1343 =item do_study: out of memory
1345 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1347 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1349 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1352 =item elseif should be elsif
1354 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1355 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1356 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1357 unlikely to be what you want.
1359 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1361 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1362 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1363 routines has been prematurely ended.
1365 =item entering effective %s failed
1367 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1368 effective uids or gids failed.
1370 =item Error converting file specification %s
1372 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1373 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1374 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1375 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1376 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1378 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1380 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1381 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1382 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1384 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1386 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1387 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1388 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1390 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1392 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1393 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1394 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1395 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1396 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1397 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1399 =item Excessively long <> operator
1401 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1402 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1403 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1404 variable and glob that.
1406 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1408 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1410 =item Exiting eval via %s
1412 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1413 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1415 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1417 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1418 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1419 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1421 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1423 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1424 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1426 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1428 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1429 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1431 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1433 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1434 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1435 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1436 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1438 =item false [] range "%s" in regexp
1440 (W) A character class range must start and end at a literal character, not
1441 another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-" in your false
1442 range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the "-", "\-".
1445 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1447 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1448 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1449 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1450 the Perl source code is distressed.
1452 =item fcntl is not implemented
1454 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1455 PDP-11 or something?
1457 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1459 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1460 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1461 the FileHandle package.
1463 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1465 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1466 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1467 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1468 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1471 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1473 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1474 intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1475 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1476 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1479 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1481 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1482 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1483 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1486 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1488 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1489 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1490 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1493 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1495 (W) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed some
1496 time before now. Check your logic flow. flock() operates on filehandles.
1497 Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the same name?
1499 =item Format %s redefined
1501 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1505 eval "format NAME =...";
1508 =item Format not terminated
1510 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1511 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1513 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1523 (or something like that).
1525 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1527 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1529 =item gethostent not implemented
1531 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1532 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1535 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1537 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1538 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1540 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1542 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1543 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1545 =item Glob not terminated
1547 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1548 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1549 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1550 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1552 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1554 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1555 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1556 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1559 =item goto must have label
1561 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1562 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1564 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1566 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1567 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1568 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1570 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1572 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1573 is now heavily deprecated.
1575 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1577 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1578 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1579 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1581 =item Identifier too long
1583 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1584 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1585 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1586 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1588 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1590 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1591 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1592 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1594 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1596 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1597 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1598 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1601 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1603 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1604 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this
1605 error when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason,
1606 your version of Perl appears to have been built without this support.
1607 Talk to your Perl administrator.
1609 =item Illegal division by zero
1611 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1612 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1614 =item Illegal modulus zero
1616 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1617 don't take to this kindly.
1619 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1621 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1623 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1625 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1627 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1629 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1630 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1632 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1634 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1635 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1637 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1639 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1640 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1641 before the illegal character.
1643 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1645 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1646 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1648 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1650 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1651 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1653 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1655 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1656 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1657 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1658 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1659 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1660 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1661 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1663 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1665 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1666 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1667 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1668 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1669 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1670 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1671 for more information.
1673 =item Insecure directory in %s
1675 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1676 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1679 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1681 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1682 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1683 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1684 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1685 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1687 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1689 (W) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1690 as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for your
1691 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1692 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1693 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1694 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1695 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1696 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1699 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1701 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1702 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1703 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1704 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1705 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1706 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1707 and execute the specified command.
1709 =item internal disaster in regexp
1711 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1713 =item glob failed (%s)
1715 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1716 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1717 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1718 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1719 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1720 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1721 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1722 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1723 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1724 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1727 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1729 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1731 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1733 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1734 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1736 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1738 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not recognized
1739 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1741 =item invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
1743 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1744 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1746 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1748 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1749 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1751 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1753 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1754 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute
1755 had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated
1756 too soon. See L<attributes>.
1758 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1760 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1761 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1764 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1766 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1767 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1770 =item ioctl is not implemented
1772 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1773 strange for a machine that supports C.
1775 =item junk on end of regexp
1777 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1779 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1781 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1782 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1783 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1785 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1787 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1788 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1791 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1793 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1794 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1797 =item leaving effective %s failed
1799 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1800 effective uids or gids failed.
1802 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1804 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1805 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1807 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1809 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1810 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context.
1811 See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1813 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1815 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1816 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1818 =item Method %s not permitted
1822 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1824 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1825 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1826 ended earlier on the current line.
1828 =item Misplaced _ in number
1830 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1832 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1834 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1835 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1836 one line to the next.
1838 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1840 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1841 double-quotish context.
1843 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1845 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1846 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1848 =item Missing command in piped open
1850 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1851 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1853 =item Missing operator before %s?
1855 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1856 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1858 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1860 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1861 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1862 you were last editing.
1864 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1866 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1867 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1868 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1870 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1873 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1875 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1877 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1878 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1881 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1883 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1884 be created for some peculiar reason.
1886 =item Module name must be constant
1888 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1890 =item msg%s not implemented
1892 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1894 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1896 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1897 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1899 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1901 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
1902 have a name with which they can be found.
1904 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1906 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1907 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1908 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
1909 provided for this purpose.
1911 =item Negative length
1913 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1914 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1916 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1918 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1919 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1921 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1922 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1926 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1927 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1929 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1931 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1932 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1933 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1936 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1938 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1940 =item No %s specified for -%c
1942 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
1943 you haven't specified one.
1945 =item No comma allowed after %s
1947 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1948 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1949 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1951 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1952 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1953 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1954 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1955 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1956 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1957 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1958 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1959 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1960 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1961 this error was triggered?
1963 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1965 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1966 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1967 want to pipe the output from this command.
1969 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1971 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1972 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1973 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1974 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1975 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1978 =item No dbm on this machine
1980 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1981 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1983 =item No DBsub routine
1985 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1986 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1987 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1988 ordinary subroutine call.
1990 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1992 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1993 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1994 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1996 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1998 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1999 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
2000 from which to read data for stdin.
2002 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
2004 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
2005 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
2006 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2008 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
2010 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
2011 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
2012 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2014 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2016 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our" declarations,
2017 because that doesn't make much sense under existing semantics. Such
2018 syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2020 =item No Perl script found in input
2022 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2023 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2025 =item No setregid available
2027 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2030 =item No setreuid available
2032 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2035 =item No space allowed after -%c
2037 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow immediately
2038 after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2040 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2042 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2043 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2044 array indices for that to work.
2046 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2048 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
2049 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
2050 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
2051 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2053 =item No such pipe open
2055 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2056 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
2057 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2059 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2061 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
2062 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2064 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2066 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2067 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2068 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
2069 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
2072 =item Not a CODE reference
2074 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2075 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2076 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2077 See also L<perlref>.
2079 =item Not a format reference
2081 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2082 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2084 =item Not a GLOB reference
2086 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
2087 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2088 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
2089 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2091 =item Not a HASH reference
2093 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
2094 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2095 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2097 =item Not a perl script
2099 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2100 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2103 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2105 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
2106 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2107 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2109 =item Not a subroutine reference
2111 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2112 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2113 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2114 See also L<perlref>.
2116 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2118 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2119 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2121 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2123 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
2124 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2125 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2127 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2129 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2131 =item Not enough format arguments
2133 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
2136 =item Null filename used
2138 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
2139 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2141 =item Null picture in formline
2143 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2144 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2145 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2147 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2149 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
2153 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2155 =item NULL regexp argument
2157 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2159 =item NULL regexp parameter
2161 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2163 =item Number too long
2165 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2166 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2167 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2168 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2170 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2172 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
2173 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
2174 on portability concerns.
2176 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2178 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2180 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors. The
2181 octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a future
2184 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2186 (W) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2187 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2189 =item Offset outside string
2191 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2192 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2193 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2194 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2198 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2202 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2204 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2206 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2207 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2208 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2209 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2210 true. See L<overload>.
2212 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2214 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2215 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2216 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2217 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2218 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2220 =item Out of memory!
2222 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2223 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl
2224 has no option but to exit immediately.
2226 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2228 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2229 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2231 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2233 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2234 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2236 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2237 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2238 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2239 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2240 error is trappable I<once>.
2242 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2244 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2245 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2246 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2247 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2249 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2251 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2252 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2253 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2257 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2260 =item panic: ck_grep
2262 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2264 =item panic: ck_split
2266 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2268 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2270 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2271 are in the savestack.
2273 =item panic: del_backref
2275 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2280 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2281 it wasn't an eval context.
2283 =item panic: do_match
2285 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2287 =item panic: do_split
2289 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2291 =item panic: do_subst
2293 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2295 =item panic: do_trans
2297 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2301 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2305 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2306 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2308 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2310 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2312 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2314 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2316 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2318 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2322 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2323 it wasn't a block context.
2325 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2327 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2329 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2331 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2332 invalid enum on the top of it.
2336 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2338 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2340 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2341 references to an object.
2343 =item panic: mapstart
2345 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2347 =item panic: null array
2349 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2351 =item panic: pad_alloc
2353 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2354 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2356 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2358 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2359 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2361 =item panic: pad_free po
2363 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2365 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2367 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2368 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2370 =item panic: pad_sv po
2372 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2374 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2376 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2377 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2379 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2381 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2383 =item panic: pp_iter
2385 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2387 =item panic: realloc
2389 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2391 =item panic: restartop
2393 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2394 didn't supply the destination.
2398 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2399 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2401 =item panic: scan_num
2403 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2405 =item panic: sv_insert
2407 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2410 =item panic: top_env
2412 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2416 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2420 (P) An internal error.
2422 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2424 (W) You said something like
2430 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2432 Remember that "my", "our" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2434 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2436 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2437 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2438 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2440 =item Permission denied
2442 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2444 =item pid %x not a child
2446 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2447 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2448 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2450 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2452 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2453 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2455 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2457 (W) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2458 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2460 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2462 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2463 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2464 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2465 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2467 You probably wrote something like this:
2474 when you should have written this:
2481 If you really want comments, build your list the
2482 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2486 'b', # another comment
2489 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2491 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2492 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2493 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2496 You probably wrote something like this:
2500 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2501 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2505 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2507 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2508 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2509 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2510 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2512 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2514 (S) The old irregular construct
2518 is now misinterpreted as
2522 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2523 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2524 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2527 =item Premature end of script headers
2531 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2533 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2534 Check your logic flow.
2536 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2538 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2539 Check your logic flow.
2541 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2543 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2544 or defined with a different function prototype.
2546 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2548 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2549 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2550 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2551 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2553 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
2555 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2556 Check your logic flow.
2558 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2560 (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had already
2563 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2565 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2567 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2569 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2570 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2571 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2573 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2575 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2576 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2578 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2580 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2581 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2583 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2585 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2586 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2587 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2588 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2590 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2591 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2592 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2593 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2595 =item Reference is already weak
2597 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2598 Doing so has no effect.
2600 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2602 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2603 reference count of other than 1.
2605 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2607 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2608 could match an empty string.
2610 =item regexp memory corruption
2612 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2613 expression compiler gave it.
2615 =item regexp out of space
2617 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2619 =item Reversed %s= operator
2621 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2622 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2624 =item Runaway format
2626 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2627 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2628 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2629 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2630 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2632 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2634 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2635 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2636 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2637 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2638 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2639 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2641 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2642 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2643 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2646 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2648 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2649 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2650 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2651 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2652 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2653 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2655 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2656 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2657 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2660 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2662 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2663 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2665 =item Search pattern not terminated
2667 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2668 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2669 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2671 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2673 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2674 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2676 =item select not implemented
2678 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2680 =item sem%s not implemented
2682 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2684 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2686 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2687 that had previously been marked as free.
2689 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2691 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2692 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2694 =item send() on closed socket %s
2696 (W) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2697 Check your logic flow.
2699 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2701 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2704 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2706 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2707 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2709 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2711 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2712 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2714 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2716 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2721 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
2722 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error
2723 text varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen
2724 variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted",
2725 "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and
2726 "Did not produce a valid header".
2728 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2730 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2731 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2732 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2733 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2734 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2735 for more information:
2737 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2738 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2739 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2740 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2741 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2743 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2745 =item setegid() not implemented
2747 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2748 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2751 =item seteuid() not implemented
2753 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2754 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2757 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
2759 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no arguments,
2760 unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process group ID.
2762 =item setrgid() not implemented
2764 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2765 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2768 =item setruid() not implemented
2770 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2771 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2774 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2776 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2777 because the world might have written on it already.
2779 =item shm%s not implemented
2781 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2783 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
2785 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2787 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2789 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2790 put it into the wrong package?
2792 =item sort is now a reserved word
2794 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2795 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2797 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2799 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2800 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2801 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2803 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2805 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2806 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2810 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2811 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2812 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2814 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2816 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2817 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2819 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2821 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2822 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2823 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2824 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2827 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2829 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2830 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2831 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2832 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2833 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2835 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2837 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2838 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2841 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2843 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2847 eval "sub name { ... }";
2850 =item Substitution loop
2852 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2853 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2854 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2855 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2857 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2859 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2860 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2861 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2863 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2865 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2866 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2867 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2869 =item substr outside of string
2871 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2872 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2873 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2874 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2875 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2877 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2879 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2880 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2882 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2884 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2885 real and effective uids or gids.
2889 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2891 A keyword is misspelled.
2892 A semicolon is missing.
2894 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2895 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2896 A closing quote is missing.
2898 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2899 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2900 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2901 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2902 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2903 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2904 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2905 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2906 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2908 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2910 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2911 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2914 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2916 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2917 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2918 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2919 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2921 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
2923 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2924 Check your logic flow.
2926 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2928 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2929 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2931 =item tell() on unopened file
2933 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2934 never opened or has since been closed.
2936 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2938 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2939 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2941 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2943 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2944 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2953 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2954 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2956 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2958 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2959 to the probings of Configure.
2961 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2963 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2964 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2965 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2966 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2969 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2971 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2972 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2973 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2975 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
2977 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2979 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2980 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2981 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2982 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2983 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2984 %ENV which produced the warning.
2986 =item times not implemented
2988 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2989 you're not running on Unix.
2991 =item Too few args to syscall
2993 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2994 system call to call, silly dilly.
2996 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2998 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2999 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3000 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3001 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3004 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3005 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
3006 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
3007 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3009 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3010 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3012 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3014 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3015 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3016 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3022 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3023 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3026 =item Too many args to syscall
3028 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3030 =item Too many arguments for %s
3032 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3034 =item trailing \ in regexp
3036 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
3039 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3041 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3042 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3043 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3045 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3047 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3050 =item truncate not implemented
3052 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3053 Configure knows about.
3055 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3057 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3058 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3059 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3060 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3062 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
3064 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
3065 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
3067 =item umask not implemented
3069 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
3070 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3072 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3074 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3076 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3078 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
3079 contexts were entered and left.
3081 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3083 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3084 values were temporarily localized.
3086 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3088 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
3089 were entered and left.
3091 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3093 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
3094 scalars were allocated and freed.
3096 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3098 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3099 another package? See L<perlform>.
3101 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3103 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
3104 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3106 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3108 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
3109 has since been undefined.
3111 =item Undefined subroutine called
3113 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3114 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3116 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3118 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
3119 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3121 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3123 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3124 another package? See L<perlform>.
3126 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3128 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
3129 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
3131 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3133 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3134 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3136 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3138 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
3140 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3142 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3143 of valid modes: C<E<lt>>, C<E<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+E<lt>>,
3144 C<+E<gt>>, C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|E<45>>.
3146 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3148 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3149 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3150 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3151 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3153 =item unmatched () in regexp
3155 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3156 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
3157 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3159 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3161 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
3162 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
3163 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
3164 place you were last editing.
3166 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3168 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3169 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
3172 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3174 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
3175 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
3176 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
3178 =item Unrecognized character %s
3180 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3181 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3182 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3184 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3186 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3189 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3191 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3192 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3194 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3196 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3197 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3198 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3200 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3202 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3203 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3204 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3206 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3208 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3210 =item Unsupported function fork
3212 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3214 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3215 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3216 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3218 =item Unsupported function %s
3220 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3221 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3223 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3225 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3226 least that's what Configure thought.
3228 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3230 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3231 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3232 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3233 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3235 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3237 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing an
3238 attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3239 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3240 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3242 =item Unterminated attribute list
3244 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start
3245 of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3246 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute
3247 too soon. See L<attributes>.
3249 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3251 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3252 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3254 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3256 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3257 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3258 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3259 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3261 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3263 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3264 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3266 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3268 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3269 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3271 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3273 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3274 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3275 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3277 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3279 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3280 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3281 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3282 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3284 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3285 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3286 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3287 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3288 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3290 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3291 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3292 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3293 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3295 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3296 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3297 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3299 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3301 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3302 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3303 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3304 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3305 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3306 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3308 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3310 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3311 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3314 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
3316 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3317 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3318 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3320 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3322 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3324 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3326 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3327 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3328 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3329 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3330 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3331 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3335 when you meant to say
3337 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3339 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3340 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3345 when you should have said
3349 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3350 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3351 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3352 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3353 L<perlref> for more on this.
3355 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3357 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3358 valid when C<untie> was called.
3360 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3362 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3363 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3364 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3365 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3366 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3368 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3370 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3371 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3372 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3375 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3377 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3378 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3379 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3380 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3381 on the front of your variable.
3383 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3385 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3386 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3387 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3388 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3390 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3392 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3393 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3394 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3395 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3396 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3397 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3400 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3401 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3402 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3403 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3405 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3407 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3408 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3410 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3411 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3412 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3413 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3414 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3415 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3417 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3418 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3419 will I<never> share the given variable.
3421 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3422 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3423 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3424 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3427 =item Variable syntax
3429 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3430 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3433 =item Version number must be a constant number
3435 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3436 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3439 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3441 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3443 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3444 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3447 are supported and installed on your system.
3448 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3450 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3451 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3452 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3453 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3454 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3455 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3456 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3457 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3458 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3460 =item Warning: something's wrong
3462 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3463 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3465 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3467 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3468 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3470 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3472 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3473 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3474 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3475 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3479 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3483 but in actual fact, you got
3487 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3489 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
3491 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3492 Check your logic flow.
3494 =item X outside of string
3496 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3497 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3499 =item x outside of string
3501 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3502 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3504 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3506 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3508 =item Xsub called in sort
3510 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3512 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3514 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3515 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3516 Use a filename instead.
3518 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3520 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3521 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3522 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3523 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3525 =item You need to quote "%s"
3527 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3528 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3529 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3530 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3532 =item %cetsockopt() on closed socket %s
3534 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3535 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3536 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt> and L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3538 =item \1 better written as $1
3540 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3541 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3542 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3543 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3544 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3546 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3548 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3549 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3550 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3552 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3554 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3555 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3556 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3557 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3560 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3567 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3569 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3570 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3572 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3574 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3582 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3583 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3584 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3585 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3587 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3589 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3590 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3592 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3594 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3595 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3596 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3597 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"