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 "my sub" not yet implemented
36 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that
39 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
41 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
42 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
43 if you want to localize a package variable.
45 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
47 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
48 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
49 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
50 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
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 "use" not allowed in expression
60 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
61 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
63 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
65 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
68 =item / cannot take a count
70 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
71 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
74 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
76 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
77 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
78 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
81 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
83 (F) You had an pack template indicating a counted-length string,
84 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
87 =item / must follow a numeric type
89 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
90 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
93 =item % may only be used in unpack
95 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
96 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
97 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
99 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
101 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
102 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
104 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
106 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
107 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
109 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
111 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
112 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
113 C<'>-delimited regular expression.
115 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
117 (W) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
118 like in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true
119 or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string,
120 which is probably not what you had in mind.
122 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
124 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
125 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
126 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
128 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
130 (W) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a
131 definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
132 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
133 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine
134 definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively,
135 if you are certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put
136 an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
138 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
140 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
143 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
145 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
147 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
150 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
152 or a hash slice, such as
154 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
155 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
157 =item %s did not return a true value
159 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
160 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
161 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
162 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
164 =item %s found where operator expected
166 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
167 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
168 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
169 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
171 =item %s had compilation errors
173 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
175 =item %s has too many errors
177 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
178 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
180 =item %s matches null string many times
182 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
183 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
185 =item %s never introduced
187 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
188 before it could possibly have been used.
190 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
192 (W) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific handler.
193 That name might have a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it
194 doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute name, instead.
199 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
201 =item %s: Command not found
203 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
204 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
207 =item %s: Expression syntax
209 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
210 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
213 =item %s: Undefined variable
215 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
216 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
221 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
222 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
225 =item (in cleanup) %s
227 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
228 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
229 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
230 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
231 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
234 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
235 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
237 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
239 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
240 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
241 the previous line just because you saw this message.
243 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
245 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
246 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
248 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
250 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
251 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
253 =item C<-p> destination: %s
255 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
256 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
257 redirected it with select().)
259 =item 500 Server error
263 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
265 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
266 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
268 =item @ outside of string
270 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
271 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
273 =item <> should be quotes
275 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
278 =item accept() on closed fd
280 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
281 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
283 =item Allocation too large: %lx
285 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
287 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
289 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
290 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
291 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
292 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
293 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
294 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
296 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
298 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
300 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
302 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
303 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
304 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
306 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
308 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
309 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
310 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
313 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
314 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
315 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
316 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
318 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
319 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
320 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">
323 =item Args must match #! line
325 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
326 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
327 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
328 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
330 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
332 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
333 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
334 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
336 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
338 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
339 is now heavily deprecated.
341 =item assertion botched: %s
343 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
345 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
347 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
349 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
351 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
352 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
353 know which context to supply to the right side.
355 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
357 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
358 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
361 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
363 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
364 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
365 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
366 that can no longer be found in the table.
368 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
370 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
371 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
372 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
373 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
376 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
378 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
380 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
382 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
383 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
384 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
385 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
386 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
387 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
389 =item Attempt to join self
391 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
392 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
393 need to move the join() to some other thread.
395 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
397 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
398 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
399 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
400 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
401 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
404 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
406 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
407 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
408 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
410 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
412 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
413 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
414 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
415 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
417 =item Bad filehandle: %s
419 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
420 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
421 did it in another package.
423 =item Bad free() ignored
425 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
426 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
427 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
429 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
430 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
431 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
436 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
438 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
440 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
441 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
444 =item Bad name after %s::
446 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
447 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
456 $sym = "mypack::$var";
458 =item Bad symbol for array
460 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
461 wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
465 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
466 wasn't a symbol table entry.
468 =item Bad symbol for hash
470 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
471 wasn't a symbol table entry.
473 =item Badly placed ()'s
475 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
476 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
479 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
481 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
482 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
483 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
485 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
487 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
488 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
489 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
491 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
493 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
494 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
496 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
498 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
499 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
500 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
501 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
502 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
504 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
506 (W) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
507 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
508 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
510 =item bind() on closed fd
512 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
513 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
515 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
517 (W) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
519 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
521 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
523 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
525 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
526 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
527 so it was truncated to the string shown.
529 =item Callback called exit
531 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
532 exited by calling exit.
534 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
536 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
537 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
538 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
539 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
541 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
543 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
544 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
546 =item Can't "last" outside a block
548 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
549 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
550 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
551 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
552 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
553 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
555 =item Can't "next" outside a block
557 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
558 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
559 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
560 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
561 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
563 =item Can't read CRTL environ
565 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
566 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
567 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
568 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
570 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
572 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
573 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
574 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
575 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
576 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
578 =item Can't bless non-reference value
580 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
581 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
583 =item Can't break at that line
585 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
586 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
589 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
591 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
592 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
593 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
595 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
597 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
598 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
599 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
600 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
602 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
604 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
605 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
606 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
607 Something like this will reproduce the error:
610 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
611 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
613 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
615 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
616 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
617 Something like this will reproduce the error:
620 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
621 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
623 =item Can't chdir to %s
625 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
626 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
628 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
630 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
632 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
634 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
635 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
645 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
647 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
649 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
650 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
652 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
654 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
655 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
657 =item Can't coerce array into hash
659 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
660 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
661 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
663 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
665 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
666 or other plumbing problems.
668 =item Can't declare %s in my
670 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
671 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
673 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
675 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
677 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
679 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
680 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
683 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
685 (S) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
686 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
687 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
689 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
691 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
692 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
694 =item Can't do setegid!
696 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
699 =item Can't do seteuid!
701 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
703 =item Can't do setuid
705 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
706 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
707 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
708 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
709 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
710 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
712 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
714 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
715 without flags is emulated.
717 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
719 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
720 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
722 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
724 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
725 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
727 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
729 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
730 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
731 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
732 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
733 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
734 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
738 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
739 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
740 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
742 =item Can't execute %s
744 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
745 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
747 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
749 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
750 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
751 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
753 =item Can't find %s on PATH
755 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
758 =item Can't find label %s
760 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
761 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
763 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
765 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
766 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
767 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
769 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
771 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
772 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
773 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
777 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
779 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
781 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
782 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
783 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
784 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
785 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
786 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
787 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
788 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
789 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
790 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
791 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
792 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
793 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
794 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
796 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
798 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
799 can't retrieve its name for later use.
801 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
803 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
804 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
806 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
808 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
809 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
810 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
813 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
815 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
816 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
818 =item Can't localize through a reference
820 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
821 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
822 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
823 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
825 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
827 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
828 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
829 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
832 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
834 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
835 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
836 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
837 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
839 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
841 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
842 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
843 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
844 doing C<make install>.
846 =item Can't locate %s
848 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
849 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
850 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
851 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
852 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
853 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
856 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
858 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
859 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
860 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
862 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
864 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
867 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
869 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
871 =item Can't modify %s in %s
873 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
874 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
876 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
878 (F) Subroutines used in lvalue context should be marked as such, see
879 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
881 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
883 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
886 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
888 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
891 =item Can't open %s: %s
893 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
894 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
895 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
896 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
899 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
901 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
902 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
903 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
904 and then read it in under a different file handle.
906 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
908 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
909 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
910 command line for writing.
912 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
914 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
915 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
917 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
919 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
920 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
923 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
925 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
926 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
928 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
930 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
932 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
934 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
935 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
936 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
937 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
939 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
941 (S) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup file. Perl
942 was unable to remove the original file to replace it with the modified
943 file. The file was left unmodified.
945 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
947 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
948 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
950 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
952 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
953 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
955 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
957 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
960 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
962 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
963 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
965 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
967 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such
968 as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
971 =item Can't stat script "%s"
973 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
974 it open already. Bizarre.
976 =item Can't swap uid and euid
978 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
981 =item Can't take log of %g
983 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
984 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
985 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
986 the negative numbers.
988 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
990 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
991 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
992 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
994 =item Can't undef active subroutine
996 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
997 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
998 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1002 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1003 as the main Perl stack.
1005 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1007 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
1008 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
1009 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
1010 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1012 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1014 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
1015 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
1016 code calling sv_upgrade.
1018 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
1020 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1021 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1022 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1024 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1026 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1027 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
1028 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1029 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1032 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
1034 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
1035 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
1036 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
1038 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1040 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
1042 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1044 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1045 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1046 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1048 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
1050 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
1051 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
1052 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
1053 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
1054 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
1056 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
1058 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1059 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1061 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1063 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
1064 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1066 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1068 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1069 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1071 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1073 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
1074 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
1075 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
1076 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1079 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1081 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1082 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1083 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1085 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1087 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1088 references can be weakened.
1090 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1092 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1093 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1094 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1096 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1098 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1099 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1101 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1103 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1104 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1105 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1107 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1109 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1111 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1113 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1114 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1115 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that the last two constructs
1116 are not currently implemented, they are placeholders for future extensions.
1118 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1120 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1121 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1122 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1123 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1124 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1126 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1128 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1129 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1130 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1131 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1132 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1134 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1136 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1138 chmod 777, $filename
1140 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1141 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1143 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1145 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1147 =item Compilation failed in require
1149 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1150 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1151 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1153 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1155 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1156 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1157 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1158 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1159 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1160 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1161 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1162 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1163 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1165 =item connect() on closed fd
1167 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1168 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1170 =item Constant is not %s reference
1172 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1173 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1174 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1175 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1176 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1178 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1180 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1181 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1184 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1186 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1187 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1190 =item constant(%s): %%^H is not localized
1192 (F) When setting compile-time-lexicalized hash %^H one should set the
1193 corresponding bit of $^H as well.
1195 =item constant(%s): %s
1197 (F) Compile-time-substitutions (such as overloaded constants and
1198 character names) were not correctly set up.
1200 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1202 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1204 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1206 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1208 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1210 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1211 expression compiler gave it.
1213 =item corrupted regexp program
1215 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1216 a valid magic number.
1218 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1220 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1221 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1222 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1223 case it indicates something else.
1225 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1227 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1228 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1229 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1231 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1233 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1234 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1235 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1237 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1239 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1240 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1241 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1243 =item Did not produce a valid header
1247 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1249 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1251 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1253 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1254 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1258 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1259 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1261 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1263 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1264 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1265 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1266 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1267 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1268 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1269 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1270 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1273 =item Document contains no data
1277 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1279 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1281 =item do_study: out of memory
1283 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1285 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1287 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1290 =item elseif should be elsif
1292 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1293 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1294 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1295 unlikely to be what you want.
1297 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1299 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1300 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1302 =item entering effective %s failed
1304 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1305 effective uids or gids failed.
1307 =item Error converting file specification %s
1309 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1310 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1311 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1312 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1313 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1315 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1317 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1318 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1319 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1321 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1323 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1324 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1325 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1327 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1329 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1330 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1331 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1332 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1333 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1334 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1336 =item Excessively long <> operator
1338 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1339 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1340 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1341 variable and glob that.
1343 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1345 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1347 =item Exiting eval via %s
1349 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1350 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1352 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1354 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1355 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1356 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1358 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1360 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1361 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1363 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1365 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1366 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1368 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1370 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1371 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1372 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1373 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1375 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1377 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1378 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1379 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1380 the Perl source code is distressed.
1382 =item fcntl is not implemented
1384 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1385 PDP-11 or something?
1387 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1389 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1390 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1391 the FileHandle package.
1393 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1395 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1396 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1397 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1398 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1401 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1403 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1404 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1405 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1406 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1409 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1411 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1412 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1413 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1416 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1418 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1419 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1420 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1423 =item Format %s redefined
1425 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1429 eval "format NAME =...";
1432 =item Format not terminated
1434 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1435 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1437 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1447 (or something like that).
1449 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1451 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1453 =item gethostent not implemented
1455 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1456 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1459 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1461 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1462 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1464 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1466 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1467 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1469 =item Glob not terminated
1471 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1472 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1473 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1474 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1476 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1478 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1479 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1480 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1482 =item goto must have label
1484 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1485 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1487 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1489 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1490 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1491 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1493 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1495 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1496 is now heavily deprecated.
1498 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1500 (W) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1501 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1502 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1504 =item Identifier too long
1506 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1507 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1508 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1509 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1511 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1513 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1514 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1515 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1517 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1519 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1520 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1521 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1524 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1526 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1527 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1528 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1530 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1531 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1532 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1533 properly converting the text file format.
1535 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1536 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1537 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1539 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1540 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1543 =item Illegal division by zero
1545 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1546 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1548 =item Illegal modulus zero
1550 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1551 don't take to this kindly.
1553 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1555 (F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1557 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1559 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1561 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1563 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1564 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1566 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1568 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1569 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1571 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1573 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f
1574 in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1575 before the illegal character.
1577 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1579 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1580 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1582 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1584 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1585 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1587 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1589 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1590 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1591 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1592 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1593 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1594 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1595 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1597 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1599 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1600 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1601 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1602 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1603 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1604 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1605 for more information.
1607 =item Insecure directory in %s
1609 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1610 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1613 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1615 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1616 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1617 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1618 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1619 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1621 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1623 (W) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified either
1624 as a literal in your code or as a scalar is too big for your
1625 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1626 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1627 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1628 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1629 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1630 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1633 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1635 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1636 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1637 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1638 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1639 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1640 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1641 and execute the specified command.
1643 =item internal disaster in regexp
1645 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1647 =item glob failed (%s)
1649 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1650 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1651 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1652 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1653 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1654 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1655 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1656 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1657 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1658 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1661 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1663 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1665 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1667 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1668 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1670 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1672 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not recognized
1673 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1675 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1677 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1678 greater than the maximum character, or the range didn't start/end with
1679 a literal character. See L<perlre>.
1681 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1683 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1684 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1686 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1688 (F) Something other than a comma or whitespace was seen between the
1689 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute
1690 had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated
1691 too soon. See L<attributes>.
1693 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1695 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1696 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1699 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1701 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1702 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1705 =item ioctl is not implemented
1707 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1708 strange for a machine that supports C.
1710 =item junk on end of regexp
1712 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1714 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1716 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1717 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1718 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1720 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1722 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1723 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1726 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1728 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1729 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1732 =item leaving effective %s failed
1734 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1735 effective uids or gids failed.
1737 =item listen() on closed fd
1739 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1740 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1742 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1744 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1745 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context.
1746 See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1748 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1750 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1751 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1753 =item Method %s not permitted
1757 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1759 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1760 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1761 ended earlier on the current line.
1763 =item Misplaced _ in number
1765 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1767 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1769 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1770 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1771 one line to the next.
1773 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1775 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1776 double-quotish context.
1778 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1780 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1781 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1783 =item Missing command in piped open
1785 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1786 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1788 =item Missing operator before %s?
1790 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1791 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1793 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1795 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1796 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1797 you were last editing.
1799 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1801 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1802 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1803 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1805 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1808 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1810 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1812 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1813 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1816 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1818 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1819 be created for some peculiar reason.
1821 =item Module name must be constant
1823 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1825 =item msg%s not implemented
1827 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1829 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1831 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1832 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1834 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1836 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
1837 have a name with which they can be found.
1839 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1841 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1842 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1843 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
1844 provided for this purpose.
1846 =item Negative length
1848 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1849 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1851 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1853 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1854 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1856 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1857 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1861 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1862 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1864 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1866 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1867 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1868 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1871 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1873 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1875 =item No comma allowed after %s
1877 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1878 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1879 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1881 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1882 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1883 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1884 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1885 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1886 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1887 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1888 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1889 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1890 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1891 this error was triggered?
1893 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1895 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1896 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1897 want to pipe the output from this command.
1899 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1901 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1902 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1903 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1904 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1905 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1908 =item No dbm on this machine
1910 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1911 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1913 =item No DBsub routine
1915 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1916 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1917 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1918 ordinary subroutine call.
1920 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1922 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1923 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1924 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1926 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1928 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1929 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1930 from which to read data for stdin.
1932 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1934 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1935 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1936 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1938 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1940 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1941 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1942 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1944 =item No Perl script found in input
1946 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1947 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1949 =item No setregid available
1951 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1954 =item No setreuid available
1956 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1959 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1961 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1964 =item No such array field
1966 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1967 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1968 array indices for that to work.
1970 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1972 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1973 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1974 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1975 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1977 =item No such pipe open
1979 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1980 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1981 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1983 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1985 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1986 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1988 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1990 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
1991 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1992 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1993 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1996 =item Not a CODE reference
1998 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1999 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2000 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2001 See also L<perlref>.
2003 =item Not a format reference
2005 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2006 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2008 =item Not a GLOB reference
2010 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
2011 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2012 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
2013 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2015 =item Not a HASH reference
2017 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
2018 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2019 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2021 =item Not a perl script
2023 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2024 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2027 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2029 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
2030 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2031 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2033 =item Not a subroutine reference
2035 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2036 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2037 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2038 See also L<perlref>.
2040 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2042 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2043 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2045 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2047 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
2048 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2049 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2051 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2053 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2055 =item Not enough format arguments
2057 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
2060 =item Null filename used
2062 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
2063 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2065 =item Null picture in formline
2067 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2068 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2069 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2071 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2073 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
2077 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2079 =item NULL regexp argument
2081 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2083 =item NULL regexp parameter
2085 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2087 =item Number too long
2089 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2090 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2091 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2092 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2094 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2096 (W) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295)
2097 and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for more
2098 on portability concerns.
2100 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2102 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2104 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2105 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2107 =item Offset outside string
2109 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2110 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2111 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2112 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2116 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2120 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2122 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2124 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2125 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2126 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2127 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2128 true. See L<overload>.
2130 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2132 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2133 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2134 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2135 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2136 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2138 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2140 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2141 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2143 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2145 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2146 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2148 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2149 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2150 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2151 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2152 error is trappable I<once>.
2154 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2156 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2157 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2158 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2159 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2161 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2163 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2164 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2165 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2169 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2172 =item panic: ck_grep
2174 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2176 =item panic: ck_split
2178 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2180 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2182 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2183 are in the savestack.
2185 =item panic: del_backref
2187 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2192 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2193 it wasn't an eval context.
2195 =item panic: do_match
2197 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2199 =item panic: do_split
2201 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2203 =item panic: do_subst
2205 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2207 =item panic: do_trans
2209 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2213 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2217 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2218 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2220 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2222 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2224 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2226 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2228 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2230 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2234 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2235 it wasn't a block context.
2237 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2239 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2241 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2243 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2244 invalid enum on the top of it.
2248 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2250 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2252 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2253 references to an object.
2255 =item panic: mapstart
2257 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2259 =item panic: null array
2261 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2263 =item panic: pad_alloc
2265 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2266 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2268 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2270 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2271 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2273 =item panic: pad_free po
2275 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2277 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2279 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2280 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2282 =item panic: pad_sv po
2284 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2286 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2288 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2289 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2291 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2293 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2295 =item panic: pp_iter
2297 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2299 =item panic: realloc
2301 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2303 =item panic: restartop
2305 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2306 didn't supply the destination.
2310 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2311 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2313 =item panic: scan_num
2315 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2317 =item panic: sv_insert
2319 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2322 =item panic: top_env
2324 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2328 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2330 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2332 (W) You said something like
2338 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2340 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2342 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2344 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2345 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2346 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2348 =item Permission denied
2350 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2352 =item pid %x not a child
2354 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2355 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2356 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2358 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2360 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2361 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2363 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2365 (W) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2366 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2368 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2370 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2371 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2372 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2373 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2375 You probably wrote something like this:
2382 when you should have written this:
2389 If you really want comments, build your list the
2390 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2394 'b', # another comment
2397 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2399 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2400 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2401 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2404 You probably wrote something like this:
2408 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2409 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2413 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2415 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2416 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2417 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2418 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2420 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2422 (S) The old irregular construct
2426 is now misinterpreted as
2430 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2431 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2432 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2435 =item Premature end of script headers
2439 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2441 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2442 Check your logic flow.
2444 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2446 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2447 Check your logic flow.
2449 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2451 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2452 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2453 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2457 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2459 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2460 or defined with a different function prototype.
2462 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2464 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2465 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2466 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2467 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2469 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2471 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2472 Check your logic flow.
2474 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2476 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2478 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2480 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2481 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2482 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2484 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2486 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2487 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2489 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2491 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2492 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2494 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2496 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2497 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2498 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2499 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2501 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2502 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2503 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2504 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2506 =item Reference is already weak
2508 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2509 Doing so has no effect.
2511 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2513 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2514 reference count of other than 1.
2516 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2518 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2519 could match an empty string.
2521 =item regexp memory corruption
2523 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2524 expression compiler gave it.
2526 =item regexp out of space
2528 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2530 =item Reversed %s= operator
2532 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2533 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2535 =item Runaway format
2537 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2538 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2539 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2540 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2541 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2543 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2545 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2546 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2547 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2548 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2549 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2550 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2552 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2553 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2554 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2557 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2559 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2560 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2561 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2562 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2563 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2564 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2566 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2567 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2568 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2571 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2573 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2574 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2576 =item Search pattern not terminated
2578 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2579 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2580 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2582 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2584 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2585 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2587 =item select not implemented
2589 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2591 =item sem%s not implemented
2593 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2595 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2597 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2598 that had previously been marked as free.
2600 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2602 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2603 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2605 =item Send on closed socket
2607 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2608 Check your logic flow.
2610 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2612 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2615 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2617 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2618 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2620 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2622 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2623 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2625 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2627 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2632 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
2633 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error
2634 text varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen
2635 variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted",
2636 "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and
2637 "Did not produce a valid header".
2639 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2641 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2642 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2643 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2644 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2645 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2646 for more information:
2648 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2649 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2650 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2651 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2652 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2654 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2656 =item setegid() not implemented
2658 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2659 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2662 =item seteuid() not implemented
2664 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2665 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2668 =item setrgid() not implemented
2670 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2671 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2674 =item setruid() not implemented
2676 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2677 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2680 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2682 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2683 because the world might have written on it already.
2685 =item shm%s not implemented
2687 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2689 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2691 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2693 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2695 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2696 put it into the wrong package?
2698 =item sort is now a reserved word
2700 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2701 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2703 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2705 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2706 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2707 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2709 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2711 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2712 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2716 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2717 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2718 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2720 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2722 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2723 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2725 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2727 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2728 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2729 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2730 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2733 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2735 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2736 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2737 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2738 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2739 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2741 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2743 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2744 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2747 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2749 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2753 eval "sub name { ... }";
2756 =item Substitution loop
2758 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2759 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2760 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2761 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2763 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2765 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2766 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2767 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2769 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2771 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2772 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2773 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2775 =item substr outside of string
2777 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2778 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2779 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2780 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2781 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2783 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2785 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2786 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2788 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2790 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2791 real and effective uids or gids.
2795 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2797 A keyword is misspelled.
2798 A semicolon is missing.
2800 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2801 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2802 A closing quote is missing.
2804 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2805 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2806 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2807 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2808 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2809 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2810 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2811 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2812 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2814 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2816 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2817 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2820 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2822 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2823 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2824 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2825 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2827 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2829 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2830 Check your logic flow.
2832 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2834 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2835 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2837 =item tell() on unopened file
2839 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2840 never opened or has since been closed.
2842 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2844 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2845 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2847 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2849 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2850 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2859 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2860 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2862 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2864 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2865 to the probings of Configure.
2867 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2869 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2870 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2871 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2872 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2875 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2877 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2878 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2879 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2881 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2883 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2885 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2886 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2887 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2888 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2889 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2890 %ENV which produced the warning.
2892 =item times not implemented
2894 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2895 you're not running on Unix.
2897 =item Too few args to syscall
2899 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2900 system call to call, silly dilly.
2902 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2904 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2905 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2906 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2907 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2910 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2911 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2912 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2913 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2915 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2916 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2918 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2920 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2921 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2922 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2928 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2929 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2932 =item Too many args to syscall
2934 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2936 =item Too many arguments for %s
2938 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2940 =item trailing \ in regexp
2942 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2945 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2947 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2948 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2949 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2951 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2953 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2956 =item truncate not implemented
2958 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2959 Configure knows about.
2961 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2963 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2964 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2965 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2966 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2968 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2970 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2971 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2973 =item umask not implemented
2975 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2976 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2978 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2980 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2982 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2984 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2985 contexts were entered and left.
2987 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2989 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2990 values were temporarily localized.
2992 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2994 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2995 were entered and left.
2997 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2999 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
3000 scalars were allocated and freed.
3002 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3004 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3005 another package? See L<perlform>.
3007 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3009 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
3010 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3012 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3014 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
3015 has since been undefined.
3017 =item Undefined subroutine called
3019 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3020 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3022 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3024 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
3025 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3027 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3029 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3030 another package? See L<perlform>.
3032 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3034 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
3035 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
3037 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3039 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3040 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3042 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3044 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
3046 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3048 (F) The second argument of 3-arguments open is not one from the list
3049 of C<L<lt>>, C<L<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<+L<lt>>, C<+L<gt>>,
3050 C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, C<-|>, C<|-> of possible open() modes.
3052 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3054 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3055 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3056 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3057 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3059 =item unmatched () in regexp
3061 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3062 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
3063 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3065 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3067 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
3068 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
3069 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
3070 place you were last editing.
3072 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3074 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3075 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
3078 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3080 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
3081 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
3082 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
3084 =item Unrecognized character %s
3086 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3087 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3088 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3090 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3092 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3095 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3097 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3098 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3100 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3102 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3103 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3104 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3106 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3108 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3109 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3110 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3112 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3114 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3116 =item Unsupported function fork
3118 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3120 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3121 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3122 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3124 =item Unsupported function %s
3126 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3127 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3129 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3131 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3132 least that's what Configure thought.
3134 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
3136 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3137 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3138 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3139 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3141 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3143 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing an
3144 attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3145 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3146 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3148 =item Unterminated attribute list
3150 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start
3151 of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3152 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute
3153 too soon. See L<attributes>.
3155 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3157 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
3158 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3160 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3162 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
3163 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
3164 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
3165 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3167 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3169 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3170 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3172 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3174 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3175 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3177 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3179 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3180 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3181 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3183 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3185 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3186 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3187 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3188 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3190 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3191 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3192 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3193 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3194 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3196 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3197 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3198 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3199 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3201 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3202 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3203 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3205 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3207 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3208 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3209 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3210 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3211 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3212 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3214 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3216 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3217 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3220 =item Use of uninitialized value
3222 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3223 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3224 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3226 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3228 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3230 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3232 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3233 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3234 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3235 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3236 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3237 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3241 when you meant to say
3243 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3245 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3246 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3251 when you should have said
3255 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3256 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3257 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3258 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3259 L<perlref> for more on this.
3261 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3263 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3264 valid when C<untie> was called.
3266 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3268 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3269 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3270 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3271 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3272 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3274 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3276 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3277 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3278 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3281 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3283 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3284 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3285 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3286 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3287 on the front of your variable.
3289 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3291 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3292 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3293 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3294 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3296 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3298 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3299 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3300 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3301 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3302 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3303 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3306 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3307 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3308 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3309 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3311 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3313 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3314 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3316 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3317 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3318 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3319 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3320 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3321 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3323 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3324 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3325 will I<never> share the given variable.
3327 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3328 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3329 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3330 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3333 =item Variable syntax
3335 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3336 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3339 =item Version number must be a constant number
3341 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3342 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3345 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3347 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3349 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3350 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3353 are supported and installed on your system.
3354 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3356 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3357 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3358 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3359 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3360 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3361 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3362 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3363 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3364 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3366 =item Warning: something's wrong
3368 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3369 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3371 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3373 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3374 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3376 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3378 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3379 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3380 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3381 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3385 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3389 but in actual fact, you got
3393 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3395 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3397 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3398 Check your logic flow.
3400 =item X outside of string
3402 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3403 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3405 =item x outside of string
3407 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3408 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3410 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3412 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3414 =item Xsub called in sort
3416 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3418 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3420 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3421 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3422 Use a filename instead.
3424 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3426 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3427 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3428 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3429 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3431 =item You need to quote "%s"
3433 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3434 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3435 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3436 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3438 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3440 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3441 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3442 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3444 =item \1 better written as $1
3446 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3447 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3448 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3449 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3450 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3452 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3454 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3455 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3456 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3458 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3460 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3461 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3462 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3463 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3466 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3473 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3475 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3476 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3478 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3480 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3488 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3489 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3490 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3491 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3493 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3495 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3496 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3498 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3500 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3501 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3502 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3503 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"