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>.
21 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
24 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
25 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
26 The symbols C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
30 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
32 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
33 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
34 if you want to localize a package variable.
36 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
38 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
39 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
40 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
41 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
44 =item "no" not allowed in expression
46 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
47 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
49 =item "use" not allowed in expression
51 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
52 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
54 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
56 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
59 =item % may only be used in unpack
61 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
62 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
63 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
65 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
67 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
68 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
69 C<'>-delimited regular expression.
71 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
73 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
74 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
75 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
77 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
79 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
84 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
86 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
91 or a hash slice, such as
93 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
94 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
96 =item %s did not return a true value
98 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
99 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
100 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
101 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
103 =item %s found where operator expected
105 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
106 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
107 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
108 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
110 =item %s had compilation errors
112 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
114 =item %s has too many errors
116 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
117 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
119 =item %s matches null string many times
121 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
122 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
124 =item %s never introduced
126 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
127 before it could possibly have been used.
131 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
133 =item %s: Command not found
135 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
136 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
139 =item %s: Expression syntax
141 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
142 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
145 =item %s: Undefined variable
147 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
148 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
153 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
154 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
157 =item (in cleanup) %s
159 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
160 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
161 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
162 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
163 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
166 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
167 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
169 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
171 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
172 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
173 the previous line just because you saw this message.
175 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
177 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
178 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
180 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
182 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
183 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
185 =item C<-p> destination: %s
187 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
188 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
189 redirected it with select().)
191 =item 500 Server error
195 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
197 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
198 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
200 =item @ outside of string
202 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
203 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
205 =item <> should be quotes
207 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
210 =item accept() on closed fd
212 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
213 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
215 =item Allocation too large: %lx
217 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
219 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
221 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
222 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
223 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
224 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
225 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
226 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
228 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
230 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
232 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
234 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
235 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
236 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
238 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
240 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
241 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
242 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
245 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
246 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
247 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
248 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
250 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
251 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
252 to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
254 =item Args must match #! line
256 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
257 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
258 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
259 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
261 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
263 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
264 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
265 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
267 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
269 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
270 is now heavily deprecated.
272 =item assertion botched: %s
274 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
276 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
278 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
280 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
282 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
283 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
284 know which context to supply to the right side.
286 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
288 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
289 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
292 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
294 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
295 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
296 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
297 that can no longer be found in the table.
299 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
301 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
302 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
303 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
304 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
307 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
309 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
311 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
313 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
314 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
315 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
316 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
317 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
318 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
320 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
322 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
323 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
324 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
325 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
326 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
329 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
331 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
332 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
333 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
335 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
337 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
338 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
339 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
340 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
342 =item Bad filehandle: %s
344 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
345 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
346 did it in another package.
348 =item Bad free() ignored
350 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
351 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
352 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
354 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
355 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
356 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
361 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
363 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
365 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
366 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
369 =item Bad name after %s::
371 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
372 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
381 $sym = "mypack::$var";
383 =item Bad symbol for array
385 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
386 wasn't a symbol table entry.
388 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
390 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
391 wasn't a symbol table entry.
393 =item Bad symbol for hash
395 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
396 wasn't a symbol table entry.
398 =item Badly placed ()'s
400 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
401 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
404 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
406 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
407 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
408 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
410 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
412 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
413 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
414 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
416 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
418 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
419 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
421 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
423 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
424 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
425 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
426 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
427 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
429 =item bind() on closed fd
431 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
432 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
434 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
436 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
438 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
440 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
441 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
442 so it was truncated to the string shown.
444 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
446 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
447 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
448 so it was truncated to the string shown.
450 =item Callback called exit
452 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
453 exited by calling exit.
455 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
457 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
458 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
459 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
460 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
462 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
464 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
465 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
467 =item Can't "last" outside a block
469 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
470 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
471 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
472 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
473 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
474 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
476 =item Can't "next" outside a block
478 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
479 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
480 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
481 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
482 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
484 =item Can't read CRTL environ
486 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
487 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
488 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
489 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
491 =item Can't read CRTL environ
493 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
494 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
495 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
496 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
498 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
500 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
501 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
502 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
503 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
504 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
506 =item Can't bless non-reference value
508 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
509 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
511 =item Can't break at that line
513 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
514 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
517 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
519 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
520 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
521 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
523 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
525 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
526 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
527 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
528 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
530 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
532 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
533 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
534 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
535 Something like this will reproduce the error:
538 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
539 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
541 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
543 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
544 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
545 Something like this will reproduce the error:
548 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
549 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
551 =item Can't chdir to %s
553 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
554 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
556 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
558 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
560 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
562 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
563 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
573 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
575 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
577 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
578 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
580 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
582 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
583 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
585 =item Can't coerce array into hash
587 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
588 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
589 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
591 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
593 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
594 or other plumbing problems.
596 =item Can't declare %s in my
598 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
599 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
601 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
603 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
605 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
607 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
608 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
611 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
613 (S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
615 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
617 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
618 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
620 =item Can't do setegid!
622 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
625 =item Can't do seteuid!
627 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
629 =item Can't do setuid
631 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
632 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
633 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
634 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
635 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
636 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
638 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
640 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
641 without flags is emulated.
643 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
645 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
646 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
648 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
650 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
651 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
653 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
655 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
656 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
657 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
658 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
659 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
660 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
664 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
665 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
666 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
668 =item Can't execute %s
670 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
671 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
673 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
675 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
676 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
677 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
679 =item Can't find %s on PATH
681 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
684 =item Can't find label %s
686 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
687 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
689 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
691 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
692 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
693 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
695 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
697 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
698 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
699 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
703 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
705 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
707 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
708 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
709 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
710 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
711 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
712 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
713 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
714 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
715 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
716 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
717 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
718 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
719 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
720 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
722 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
724 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
725 can't retrieve its name for later use.
727 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
729 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
730 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
732 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
734 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
735 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
736 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
739 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
741 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
742 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
744 =item Can't localize through a reference
746 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
747 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
748 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
749 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
751 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
753 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
754 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
755 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
758 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
760 (F) You said something like C<local $ar-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
761 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
762 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
763 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
765 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
767 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
768 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
769 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
770 doing C<make install>.
772 =item Can't locate %s
774 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
775 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
776 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
777 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
778 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
779 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
782 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
784 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
785 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
786 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
788 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
790 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
793 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
795 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
797 =item Can't modify %s in %s
799 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
800 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
802 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
804 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
807 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
809 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
812 =item Can't open %s: %s
814 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
815 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
816 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
817 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
820 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
822 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
823 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
824 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
825 and then read it in under a different file handle.
827 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
829 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
830 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
831 command line for writing.
833 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
835 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
836 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
838 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
840 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
841 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
844 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
846 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
847 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
849 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
851 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
853 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
855 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
856 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
857 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
858 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
860 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
862 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
863 you don't have write permission to the directory.
865 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
867 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
868 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
870 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
872 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
875 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
877 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
878 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
880 =item Can't stat script "%s"
882 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
883 it open already. Bizarre.
885 =item Can't swap uid and euid
887 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
890 =item Can't take log of %g
892 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
893 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
894 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
895 the negative numbers.
897 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
899 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
900 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
901 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
903 =item Can't undef active subroutine
905 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
906 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
907 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
911 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
912 as the main Perl stack.
914 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
916 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
917 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
918 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
919 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
921 =item Can't upgrade to undef
923 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
924 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
925 code calling sv_upgrade.
927 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
929 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
930 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
931 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
933 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
935 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
936 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
937 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
938 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
941 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
943 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
944 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
945 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
947 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
949 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
951 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
953 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
954 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
955 test the type of the reference, if need be.
957 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
959 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
960 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
961 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
962 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
963 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
965 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
967 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
968 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
970 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
972 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
973 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
975 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
977 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
978 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
980 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
982 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
983 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
984 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
985 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
988 =item Can't use subscript on %s
990 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
991 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
992 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
994 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
996 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
997 references can be weakened.
999 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1001 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1002 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1003 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1005 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1007 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1008 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1010 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1012 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1013 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1014 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1016 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1018 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1020 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1022 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1023 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct,
1024 for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that the last two constructs
1025 are not currently implemented, they are placeholders for future extensions.
1027 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1029 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1030 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1031 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1032 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1033 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1035 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1037 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1038 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1039 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1040 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1041 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1043 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1045 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1047 chmod 777, $filename
1049 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1050 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1052 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1054 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1056 =item Compilation failed in require
1058 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1059 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1060 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1062 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1064 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1065 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1066 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1067 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1068 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1069 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1070 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1071 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1072 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1074 =item connect() on closed fd
1076 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1077 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1079 =item Constant is not %s reference
1081 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1082 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1083 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1084 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1085 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1087 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1089 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1090 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1093 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1095 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1096 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1099 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1101 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1103 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1105 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1107 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1109 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1110 expression compiler gave it.
1112 =item corrupted regexp program
1114 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1115 a valid magic number.
1117 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1119 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1120 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1121 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1122 case it indicates something else.
1124 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1126 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1127 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1128 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1130 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1132 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1133 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1134 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1136 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1138 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1139 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1140 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1142 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1144 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1146 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1148 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1149 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1153 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1154 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1156 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1158 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1159 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1160 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1161 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1162 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1163 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1164 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1165 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1168 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1170 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1172 =item do_study: out of memory
1174 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1176 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1178 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1181 =item elseif should be elsif
1183 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1184 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1185 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1186 unlikely to be what you want.
1188 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1190 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1191 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1193 =item entering effective %s failed
1195 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1196 effective uids or gids failed.
1198 =item Error converting file specification %s
1200 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1201 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1202 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1203 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1204 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1206 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1208 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1209 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1210 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1212 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1214 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1215 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1216 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1218 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1220 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1221 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1222 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1223 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1224 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1225 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1227 =item Excessively long <> operator
1229 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1230 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1231 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1232 variable and glob that.
1234 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1236 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1238 =item Exiting eval via %s
1240 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1241 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1243 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1245 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1246 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1247 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1249 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1251 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1252 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1254 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1256 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1257 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1259 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1261 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1262 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1263 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1264 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1266 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1268 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1269 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1270 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1271 the Perl source code is distressed.
1273 =item fcntl is not implemented
1275 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1276 PDP-11 or something?
1278 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1280 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1281 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1282 the FileHandle package.
1284 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1286 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1287 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1288 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1289 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1292 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1294 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1295 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1296 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1297 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1300 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1302 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1303 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1304 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1307 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1309 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1310 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1311 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1314 =item Format %s redefined
1316 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1320 eval "format NAME =...";
1323 =item Format not terminated
1325 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1326 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1328 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1338 (or something like that).
1340 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1342 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1344 =item gethostent not implemented
1346 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1347 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1350 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1352 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1353 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1355 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1357 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1358 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1360 =item Glob not terminated
1362 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1363 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1364 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1365 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1367 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1369 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1370 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1371 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1373 =item goto must have label
1375 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1376 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1378 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1380 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1381 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1382 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1384 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1386 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1387 is now heavily deprecated.
1389 =item Identifier too long
1391 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1392 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1393 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1394 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1396 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1398 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1399 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1400 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1402 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1404 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1405 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1406 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1409 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1411 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1412 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1413 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1415 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1416 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1417 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1418 properly converting the text file format.
1420 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1421 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1422 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1424 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1425 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1428 =item Illegal division by zero
1430 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1431 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1433 =item Illegal modulus zero
1435 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1436 don't take to this kindly.
1438 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1440 (F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1442 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1444 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1446 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1448 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1449 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1451 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1453 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1454 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1456 =item Illegal hex digit %s ignored
1458 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F in a
1459 hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1460 before the illegal character.
1462 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1464 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1465 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1467 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1469 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1470 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1471 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1472 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1473 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1474 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1475 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1477 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1479 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1480 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1481 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1482 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1483 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1484 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1485 for more information.
1487 =item Insecure directory in %s
1489 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1490 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1493 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1495 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1496 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1497 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1498 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1499 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1501 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1503 (S) The literal hex, octal or binary number you have specified is
1504 too big for your architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest
1505 literal hex, octal or binary number representable without overflow
1506 is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or 0b11111111111111111111111111111111
1507 respectively. Note that Perl transparently promotes decimal literals
1508 to a floating point representation internally--subject to loss of
1509 precision errors in subsequent operations--so this limit usually
1510 doesn't apply to decimal literals.
1512 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1514 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1515 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1516 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1517 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1518 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1519 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1520 and execute the specified command.
1522 =item internal disaster in regexp
1524 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1526 =item glob failed (%s)
1528 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1529 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1530 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1531 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1532 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1533 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1534 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1535 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1536 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1537 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1540 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1542 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1544 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1546 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1547 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1549 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1551 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1552 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1554 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1556 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1557 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1560 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1562 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1563 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1566 =item ioctl is not implemented
1568 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1569 strange for a machine that supports C.
1571 =item junk on end of regexp
1573 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1575 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1577 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1578 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1579 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1581 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1583 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1584 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1587 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1589 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1590 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1593 =item leaving effective %s failed
1595 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1596 effective uids or gids failed.
1598 =item listen() on closed fd
1600 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1601 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1603 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1605 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1606 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1608 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1610 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1611 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1612 ended earlier on the current line.
1614 =item Misplaced _ in number
1616 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1618 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1620 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1621 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1622 one line to the next.
1624 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1626 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1627 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1629 =item Missing command in piped open
1631 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1632 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1634 =item Missing operator before %s?
1636 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1637 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1639 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1641 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1642 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1643 you were last editing.
1645 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1647 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1648 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1649 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1651 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1654 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1656 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1658 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1659 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1662 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1664 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1665 be created for some peculiar reason.
1667 =item Module name must be constant
1669 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1671 =item msg%s not implemented
1673 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1675 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1677 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1678 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1680 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1682 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1683 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1684 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1685 provided for just this purpose.
1687 =item Negative length
1689 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1690 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1692 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1694 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1695 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1697 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1698 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1702 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1703 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1705 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1707 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1708 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1709 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1712 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1714 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1716 =item No comma allowed after %s
1718 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1719 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1720 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1722 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1723 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1724 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1725 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1726 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1727 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1728 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1729 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1730 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1731 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1732 this error was triggered?
1734 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1736 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1737 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1738 want to pipe the output from this command.
1740 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1742 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1743 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1744 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1745 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1746 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1749 =item No dbm on this machine
1751 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1752 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1754 =item No DBsub routine
1756 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1757 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1758 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1759 ordinary subroutine call.
1761 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1763 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1764 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1765 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1767 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1769 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1770 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1771 from which to read data for stdin.
1773 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1775 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1776 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1777 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1779 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1781 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1782 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1783 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1785 =item No Perl script found in input
1787 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1788 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1790 =item No setregid available
1792 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1795 =item No setreuid available
1797 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1800 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1802 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1805 =item No such array field
1807 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1808 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1809 array indices for that to work.
1811 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1813 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1814 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1815 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1816 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1818 =item No such pipe open
1820 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1821 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1822 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1824 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1826 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1827 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1829 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1831 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
1832 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1833 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1834 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1837 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1839 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Per was unable to find the local
1840 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1841 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1842 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1845 =item Not a CODE reference
1847 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1848 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1849 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1850 See also L<perlref>.
1852 =item Not a format reference
1854 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1855 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1857 =item Not a GLOB reference
1859 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1860 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1861 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1862 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1864 =item Not a HASH reference
1866 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1867 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1868 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1870 =item Not a perl script
1872 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1873 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1876 =item Not a SCALAR reference
1878 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1879 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1880 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1882 =item Not a subroutine reference
1884 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1885 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1886 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1887 See also L<perlref>.
1889 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
1891 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1892 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1894 =item Not an ARRAY reference
1896 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1897 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1898 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1900 =item Not enough arguments for %s
1902 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1904 =item Not enough format arguments
1906 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1909 =item Null filename used
1911 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
1912 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1914 =item Null picture in formline
1916 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1917 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1918 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1920 =item NULL OP IN RUN
1922 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1926 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1928 =item NULL regexp argument
1930 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
1932 =item NULL regexp parameter
1934 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1936 =item Number too long
1938 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1939 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1940 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1941 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1943 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
1945 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
1946 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
1948 =item Offset outside string
1950 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
1951 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
1952 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
1953 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
1957 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1961 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1963 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
1965 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
1966 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
1967 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
1968 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
1969 true. See L<overload>.
1971 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
1973 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
1974 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
1975 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
1976 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
1977 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
1979 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
1981 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
1982 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
1984 =item Out of memory during request for %s
1986 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1987 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
1989 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
1990 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
1991 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
1992 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
1993 error is trappable I<once>.
1995 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
1997 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1998 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
1999 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2000 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2002 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2004 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2005 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2006 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2010 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2013 =item panic: ck_grep
2015 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2017 =item panic: ck_split
2019 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2021 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2023 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2024 are in the savestack.
2026 =item panic: del_backref
2028 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2033 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2034 it wasn't an eval context.
2036 =item panic: do_match
2038 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2040 =item panic: do_split
2042 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2044 =item panic: do_subst
2046 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2048 =item panic: do_trans
2050 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2054 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2058 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2059 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2061 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2063 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2065 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2067 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2069 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2071 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2075 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2076 it wasn't a block context.
2078 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2080 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2082 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2084 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2085 invalid enum on the top of it.
2089 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2091 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2093 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2094 references to an object.
2096 =item panic: mapstart
2098 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2100 =item panic: null array
2102 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2104 =item panic: pad_alloc
2106 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2107 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2109 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2111 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2112 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2114 =item panic: pad_free po
2116 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2118 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2120 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2121 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2123 =item panic: pad_sv po
2125 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2127 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2129 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2130 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2132 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2134 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2136 =item panic: pp_iter
2138 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2140 =item panic: realloc
2142 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2144 =item panic: restartop
2146 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2147 didn't supply the destination.
2151 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2152 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2154 =item panic: scan_num
2156 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2158 =item panic: sv_insert
2160 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2163 =item panic: top_env
2165 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2169 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2171 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2173 (W) You said something like
2179 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2181 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2183 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2185 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2186 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2187 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2189 =item Permission denied
2191 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2193 =item pid %x not a child
2195 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2196 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2197 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2199 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2201 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2202 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2204 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2206 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2207 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2208 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2209 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2211 You probably wrote something like this:
2218 when you should have written this:
2225 If you really want comments, build your list the
2226 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2230 'b', # another comment
2233 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2235 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2236 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2237 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2240 You probably wrote something like this:
2244 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2245 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2249 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2251 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2252 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2253 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2254 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2256 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2258 (S) The old irregular construct
2262 is now misinterpreted as
2266 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2267 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2268 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2271 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2273 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2274 Check your logic flow.
2276 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2278 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2279 Check your logic flow.
2281 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2283 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2284 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2285 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2289 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2291 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2292 or defined with a different function prototype.
2294 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2296 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2297 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2298 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2299 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2301 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2303 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2304 Check your logic flow.
2306 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2308 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2310 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2312 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2313 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2314 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2316 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2318 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2319 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2321 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2323 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2324 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2326 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2328 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2329 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2330 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2331 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2333 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2334 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2335 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2336 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2338 =item Reference is already weak
2340 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2341 Doing so has no effect.
2343 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2345 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2346 reference count of other than 1.
2348 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2350 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2351 could match an empty string.
2353 =item regexp memory corruption
2355 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2356 expression compiler gave it.
2358 =item regexp out of space
2360 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2362 =item Reversed %s= operator
2364 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2365 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2367 =item Runaway format
2369 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2370 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2371 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2372 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2373 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2375 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2377 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2378 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2379 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2380 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2381 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2382 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2384 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2385 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2386 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2389 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2391 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2392 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2393 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2394 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2395 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2396 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2398 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2399 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2400 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2403 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2405 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2406 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2408 =item Search pattern not terminated
2410 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2411 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2412 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2414 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2416 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2417 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2419 =item select not implemented
2421 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2423 =item sem%s not implemented
2425 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2427 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2429 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2430 that had previously been marked as free.
2432 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2434 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2435 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2437 =item Send on closed socket
2439 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2440 Check your logic flow.
2442 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2444 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2447 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2449 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2450 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2452 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2454 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2455 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2457 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2459 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2464 Also known as "500 Server error".
2466 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2468 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2469 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2470 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2471 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2472 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2473 for more information:
2475 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2476 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2477 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2478 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2479 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2481 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2483 =item setegid() not implemented
2485 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2486 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2489 =item seteuid() not implemented
2491 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2492 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2495 =item setrgid() not implemented
2497 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2498 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2501 =item setruid() not implemented
2503 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2504 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2507 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2509 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2510 because the world might have written on it already.
2512 =item shm%s not implemented
2514 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2516 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2518 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2520 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2522 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2523 put it into the wrong package?
2525 =item sort is now a reserved word
2527 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2528 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2530 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2532 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2533 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2534 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2536 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2538 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2539 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2543 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2544 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2545 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2547 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2549 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2550 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2552 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2554 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2555 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2556 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2557 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2560 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2562 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2563 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2564 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2565 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2566 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2568 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2570 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2571 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2574 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2576 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2580 eval "sub name { ... }";
2583 =item Substitution loop
2585 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2586 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2587 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2588 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2590 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2592 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2593 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2594 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2596 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2598 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2599 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2600 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2602 =item substr outside of string
2604 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2605 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2606 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2607 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2608 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2610 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2612 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2613 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2615 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2617 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2618 real and effective uids or gids.
2622 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2624 A keyword is misspelled.
2625 A semicolon is missing.
2627 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2628 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2629 A closing quote is missing.
2631 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2632 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2633 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2634 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2635 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2636 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2637 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2638 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2639 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2641 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2643 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2644 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2647 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2649 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2650 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2651 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2652 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2654 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2656 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2657 Check your logic flow.
2659 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2661 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2662 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2664 =item tell() on unopened file
2666 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2667 never opened or has since been closed.
2669 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2671 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2672 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2674 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2676 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2677 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2686 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2687 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2689 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2691 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2692 to the probings of Configure.
2694 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2696 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2697 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2698 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2699 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2702 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2704 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2705 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2706 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2708 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2710 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2712 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2713 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2714 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2715 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2716 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2717 %ENV which produced the warning.
2719 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2721 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2723 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2724 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2725 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2726 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2727 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2728 %ENV which produced the warning.
2730 =item times not implemented
2732 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2733 you're not running on Unix.
2735 =item Too few args to syscall
2737 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2738 system call to call, silly dilly.
2740 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2742 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2743 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2744 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2745 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2748 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2749 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2750 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2751 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2753 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2754 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2756 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2758 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2759 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2760 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2766 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2767 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2770 =item Too many args to syscall
2772 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2774 =item Too many arguments for %s
2776 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2778 =item trailing \ in regexp
2780 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2783 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2785 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2786 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2787 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2789 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2791 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2794 =item truncate not implemented
2796 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2797 Configure knows about.
2799 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2801 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2802 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2803 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2804 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2806 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2808 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2809 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2811 =item umask not implemented
2813 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2814 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2816 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2818 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2820 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2822 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2823 contexts were entered and left.
2825 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2827 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2828 values were temporarily localized.
2830 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2832 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2833 were entered and left.
2835 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2837 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2838 scalars were allocated and freed.
2840 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2842 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2843 another package? See L<perlform>.
2845 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2847 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2848 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2850 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2852 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2853 has since been undefined.
2855 =item Undefined subroutine called
2857 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2858 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2860 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2862 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2863 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2865 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2867 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2868 another package? See L<perlform>.
2870 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2872 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2873 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2875 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2877 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2878 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2880 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
2882 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
2884 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2886 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2887 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2888 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2889 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2891 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2893 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2894 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2895 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2896 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2898 =item unmatched () in regexp
2900 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2901 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
2902 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
2904 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
2906 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
2907 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
2908 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
2909 place you were last editing.
2911 =item unmatched [] in regexp
2913 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2914 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2917 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2919 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
2920 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2921 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2923 =item Unrecognized character %s
2925 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2926 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2927 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
2929 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
2931 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
2934 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2936 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2937 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2939 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
2941 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2942 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
2943 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
2945 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
2947 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
2948 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
2949 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
2951 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
2953 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
2955 =item Unsupported function fork
2957 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
2959 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
2960 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
2961 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
2963 =item Unsupported function %s
2965 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
2966 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
2968 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
2970 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
2971 least that's what Configure thought.
2973 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
2975 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2976 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
2977 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
2978 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2980 =item Use of $# is deprecated
2982 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
2983 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
2985 =item Use of $* is deprecated
2987 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
2988 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
2989 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
2990 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
2992 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
2994 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
2995 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
2997 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
2999 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3000 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3002 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3004 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3005 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3006 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3008 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3010 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3011 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3012 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3013 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3015 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3016 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3017 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3018 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3019 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3021 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3022 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3023 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3024 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3026 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3027 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3028 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3030 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3032 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3033 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3034 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3035 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3036 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3037 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3039 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3041 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3042 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3045 =item Use of uninitialized value
3047 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3048 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3049 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3051 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3053 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3055 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3057 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3058 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3059 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3060 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3061 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3062 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3066 when you meant to say
3068 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3070 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3071 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3076 when you should have said
3080 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3081 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3082 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3083 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3084 L<perlref> for more on this.
3086 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3088 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3089 valid when C<untie> was called.
3091 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3093 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3094 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3095 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3096 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3097 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3099 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3101 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3102 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3103 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3106 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3108 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3109 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3110 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3113 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3115 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3116 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3117 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3118 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3119 on the front of your variable.
3121 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3123 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3124 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3125 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3126 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3128 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3130 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3131 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3132 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3133 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3134 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3135 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3138 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3139 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3140 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3141 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3143 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3145 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3146 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3148 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3149 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3150 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3151 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3152 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3153 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3155 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3156 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3157 will I<never> share the given variable.
3159 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3160 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3161 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3162 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3165 =item Variable syntax
3167 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3168 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3171 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3173 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3175 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3176 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3179 are supported and installed on your system.
3180 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3182 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3183 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3184 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3185 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3186 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3187 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3188 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3189 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3190 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3192 =item Warning: something's wrong
3194 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3195 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3197 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3199 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3200 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3202 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3204 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3205 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3206 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3207 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3211 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3215 but in actual fact, you got
3219 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3221 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3223 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3224 Check your logic flow.
3226 =item X outside of string
3228 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3229 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3231 =item x outside of string
3233 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3234 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3236 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3238 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3240 =item Xsub called in sort
3242 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3244 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3246 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3247 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3248 Use a filename instead.
3250 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3252 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3253 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3254 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3255 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3257 =item You need to quote "%s"
3259 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3260 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3261 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3262 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3264 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3266 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3267 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3268 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3270 =item \1 better written as $1
3272 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3273 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3274 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3275 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3276 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3278 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3280 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3281 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3282 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3284 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3286 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3287 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3288 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3289 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3292 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3299 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3301 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3302 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3304 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3306 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3314 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3315 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3316 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3317 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3319 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3321 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3322 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3324 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3326 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3327 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3328 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3329 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"