3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to
50 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
52 =item Allocation too large: %lx
54 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
56 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
58 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
61 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
63 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
64 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or
65 the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is not
68 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
69 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
70 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
71 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
73 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
74 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
75 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">
78 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
80 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
81 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
82 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
84 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
86 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
87 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
88 '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
90 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
92 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
93 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
94 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
95 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
98 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
105 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
107 (W misc) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration
108 (tr///) operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
109 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the length
110 of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on that scalar
111 value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and
112 L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
114 =item Args must match #! line
116 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
117 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
118 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
119 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
121 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
123 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
125 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
127 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
132 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
134 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element, such as:
139 or a hash or array slice, such as:
141 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
142 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
144 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
146 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
147 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
149 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
151 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
152 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message will
153 identify which operator was so unfortunate.
155 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
157 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
158 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
160 =item assertion botched: %s
162 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
164 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
166 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
168 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
170 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
171 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
172 know which context to supply to the right side.
174 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
176 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
177 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any of those
180 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
182 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
183 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
184 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string that can
185 no longer be found in the table.
187 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
189 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
190 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before the
191 free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps() routine
192 will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free it.
194 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
196 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
198 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
200 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if
201 it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier, and
202 should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This could indicate
203 that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that SvREFCNT_inc() was
204 called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized when it shouldn't have
205 been, or that memory has been corrupted.
207 =item Attempt to join self
209 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
210 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
211 need to move the join() to some other thread.
213 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
215 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a function,
216 or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This means the result
217 contains a pointer to a location that could become invalid anytime, even
218 before the end of the current statement. Use literals or global values as
219 arguments to the "p" pack() template to avoid this warning.
221 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
223 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used as
224 an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to dereference it
225 first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
227 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
229 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
230 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
231 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
232 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
234 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
236 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
237 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
238 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
240 =item Bad filehandle: %s
242 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
243 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
244 did it in another package.
246 =item Bad free() ignored
248 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
249 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting
250 environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
252 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with "hard"
253 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB> which
254 is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
258 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
260 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
262 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
263 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
266 =item Badly placed ()'s
268 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
269 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
272 =item Bad name after %s::
274 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
275 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
284 $sym = "mypack::$var";
286 =item Bad realloc() ignored
288 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had never
289 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting
290 environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
292 =item Bad symbol for array
294 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
295 wasn't a symbol table entry.
297 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
299 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
300 wasn't a symbol table entry.
302 =item Bad symbol for hash
304 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
305 wasn't a symbol table entry.
307 =item Bareword found in conditional
309 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
310 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the last argument
311 of the previous construct, for example:
315 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted
318 use constant TYPO => 1;
319 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
321 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
323 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
325 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
326 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
327 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
329 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
331 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
332 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
333 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
335 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
337 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
338 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
340 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
342 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
343 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
344 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
345 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
346 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
348 =item \1 better written as $1
350 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
351 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a substitution, but
352 stylistically it's better to use the variable form because other Perl
353 programmers will expect it, and it works better if there are more than 9
356 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
358 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
359 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
360 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
362 =item bind() on closed socket %s
364 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
365 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
367 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
369 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
371 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
373 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
375 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
377 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
378 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
380 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
382 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate
383 over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too
384 long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
386 =item Callback called exit
388 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
389 exited by calling exit.
391 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
393 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the parser
394 saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the call
395 conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype
396 declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine definition
397 ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively, if you are
398 certain that you're calling the function correctly, you may put an ampersand
399 before the name to avoid the warning. See L<perlsub>.
401 =item / cannot take a count
403 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
404 but you have also specified an explicit size for the string.
405 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
407 =item Can't bless non-reference value
409 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
410 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
412 =item Can't break at that line
414 (S internal) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the
415 debugger, indicating the line number specified wasn't the location of a
416 statement that could be stopped at.
418 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
420 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
421 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
422 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
424 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
426 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
427 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
428 Something like this will reproduce the error:
431 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
432 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
434 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
436 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
437 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
438 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
439 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
441 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
443 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
444 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
445 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
446 Something like this will reproduce the error:
449 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
450 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
452 =item Can't chdir to %s
454 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
455 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
457 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
459 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
461 =item Can't coerce array into hash
463 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
464 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
465 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
467 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
469 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
470 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
480 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
482 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
484 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
485 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
487 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
489 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
490 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
492 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
494 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
495 or other plumbing problems.
497 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
499 (S) Currently, only scalar variables can declared with a specific class
500 qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be extended
501 for other types of variables in future.
503 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
505 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
506 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
508 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
510 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
511 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
513 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
515 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
517 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
519 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
520 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
523 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
525 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
526 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
527 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
529 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m
531 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
532 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
534 =item Can't do setegid!
536 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
539 =item Can't do seteuid!
541 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
543 =item Can't do setuid
545 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
546 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
547 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
548 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
549 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
550 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
552 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
554 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
555 without flags is emulated.
557 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
559 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
560 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
562 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
564 (W exec) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
565 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
566 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable
567 in question was compiled for another architecture, or the #! line in a script
568 points to an interpreter that can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe
569 your system doesn't support #! at all.)
573 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
574 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
575 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
577 =item Can't execute %s
579 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
580 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
582 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
584 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
585 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
587 =item Can't find label %s
589 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
590 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
592 =item Can't find %s on PATH
594 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
597 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
599 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
600 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
601 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
603 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
605 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
606 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
607 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
609 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
611 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
612 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
613 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
617 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
619 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
621 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
622 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
623 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
624 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
625 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
626 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
627 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
628 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
629 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
630 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
631 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
632 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
633 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
634 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
636 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
638 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
639 can't retrieve its name for later use.
641 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
643 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
644 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
646 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
648 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
649 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
651 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
653 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
654 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
655 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
656 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
658 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
660 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
661 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
663 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
665 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
666 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
667 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
670 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
672 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD signal
673 (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this signal will
674 interfere with proper determination of exit status of child processes, Perl
675 has reset the signal to its default value. This situation typically indicates
676 that the parent program under which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being
679 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
681 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
682 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
683 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
684 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep().
685 You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect though,
686 because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once.
687 See L<perlfunc/last>.
689 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
691 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
692 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
693 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
696 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
698 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is
699 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
700 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
701 element directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
703 =item Can't localize through a reference
705 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
706 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
707 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
708 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
710 =item Can't locate %s
712 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
713 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
714 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
715 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
716 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
717 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
720 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
722 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
723 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
724 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
725 doing C<make install>.
727 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
729 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
730 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
731 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
733 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
735 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't
738 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
740 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
742 =item Can't modify %s in %s
744 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
745 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
747 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
749 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
752 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
754 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
755 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
757 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
759 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
762 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
764 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
765 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
766 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
767 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
768 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
769 loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
771 =item Can't open %s: %s
773 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
774 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
775 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
776 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
779 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
781 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You
782 can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
783 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using ">", and
784 then read it in under a different file handle.
786 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
788 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
789 couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on the
790 command line for writing.
792 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
794 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
795 couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the command line for reading.
797 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
799 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
800 couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on the command
803 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
805 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
806 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
808 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
810 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
812 =item Can't read CRTL environ
814 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
815 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
816 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
817 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
819 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
821 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
822 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
823 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
824 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
826 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
828 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
829 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
830 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
831 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
832 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
833 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
835 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
837 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup file. Perl
838 was unable to remove the original file to replace it with the modified
839 file. The file was left unmodified.
841 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
843 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
844 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
846 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
848 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
849 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
851 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
853 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
854 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
855 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
857 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
859 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
862 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
864 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such
865 as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
868 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
870 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
871 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
873 =item Can't stat script "%s"
875 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
876 it open already. Bizarre.
878 =item Can't swap uid and euid
880 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
883 =item Can't take log of %g
885 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
886 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
887 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
888 the negative numbers.
890 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
892 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
893 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
894 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
896 =item Can't undef active subroutine
898 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
899 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
900 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
904 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
905 as the main Perl stack.
907 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
909 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
910 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
911 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
912 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
914 =item Can't upgrade to undef
916 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
917 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
918 code calling sv_upgrade.
920 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
922 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
923 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
925 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
927 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
928 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
930 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
932 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
933 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
934 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
936 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
938 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
940 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
942 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
943 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
944 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
945 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
948 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
950 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
951 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
952 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
953 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
956 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
958 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
959 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
960 test the type of the reference, if need be.
962 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
964 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
965 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
967 =item Can't use subscript on %s
969 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
970 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
971 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
973 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
975 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
976 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
977 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
978 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value
979 that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
981 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
983 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
984 references can be weakened.
986 =item Can't x= to read-only value
988 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
989 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
990 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
992 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
994 (W unsafe) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
995 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
996 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently implemented;
997 they are simply placeholders for future extensions.
999 =item Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
1001 (W regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1002 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1003 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
1004 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[." and
1007 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1009 (W regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1010 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1011 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
1012 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[=" and
1015 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1017 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1020 =item chmod() mode argument is missing initial 0
1022 (W chmod) A novice will sometimes say
1024 chmod 777, $filename
1026 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1027 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1029 =item Close on unopened file <%s>
1031 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1033 =item %s: Command not found
1035 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
1036 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1039 =item Compilation failed in require
1041 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1042 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1043 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1045 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1047 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1048 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766, or
1049 perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow arbitrarily.
1050 ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without recursion and are not
1051 subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string under examination; looping in
1052 Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than in the regular expression engine;
1053 or rewriting the regular expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less.
1054 (See L<perlbook> for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1056 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1058 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to
1059 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1061 =item constant(%s): %s
1063 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define an
1064 overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name specified
1065 in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1066 C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and L<overload>.
1068 =item Constant is not %s reference
1070 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1071 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1072 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1073 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1074 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1076 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1078 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1079 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1082 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1084 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1085 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and workarounds.
1087 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1089 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1091 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1093 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1095 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1097 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1098 expression compiler gave it.
1100 =item corrupted regexp program
1102 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1103 a valid magic number.
1105 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1107 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1109 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1111 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1112 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1113 redirected it with select().)
1115 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1117 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1118 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1120 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1122 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1123 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1124 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which case it
1125 indicates something else.
1127 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1129 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1130 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1131 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1133 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1135 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1136 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1137 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1139 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1141 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label
1142 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1143 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1145 =item Did not produce a valid header
1149 =item %s did not return a true value
1151 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1152 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1153 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1154 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1156 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1158 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1160 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1162 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global variable.
1163 You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which seems superfluous.
1165 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1167 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1168 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1172 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1173 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1175 =item Document contains no data
1179 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1181 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1183 =item do_study: out of memory
1185 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1187 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1189 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1190 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1191 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1192 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1193 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1194 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1195 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1196 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1199 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1201 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1204 =item elseif should be elsif
1206 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1207 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1208 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1209 unlikely to be what you want.
1211 =item entering effective %s failed
1213 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1214 effective uids or gids failed.
1216 =item Error converting file specification %s
1218 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1219 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1220 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1221 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1222 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1224 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1226 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1227 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1228 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1230 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1232 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1233 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1234 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1235 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1236 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1237 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1239 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1241 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1242 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1243 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1245 =item Excessively long <> operator
1247 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1248 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1249 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1250 variable and glob that.
1252 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1254 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1256 =item Exiting eval via %s
1258 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a goto,
1259 or a loop control statement.
1261 =item Exiting format via %s
1263 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a goto,
1264 or a loop control statement.
1266 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1268 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort
1269 block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop
1270 control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1272 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1274 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as a
1275 goto, or a loop control statement.
1277 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1279 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as a
1280 return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1282 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1284 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has the
1285 effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is usually not
1286 what you want. Consider providing a default target package, e.g. bless($ref,
1289 =item %s: Expression syntax
1291 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
1292 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1295 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1297 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1298 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1299 routines has been prematurely ended.
1301 =item false [] range "%s" in regexp
1303 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal character,
1304 not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-" in your false
1305 range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the "-", "\-". See
1308 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1310 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1311 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1312 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1313 the Perl source code is distressed.
1315 =item fcntl is not implemented
1317 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1318 PDP-11 or something?
1320 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1322 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never
1323 initialized. You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a
1324 constructor from the FileHandle package.
1326 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1328 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it to be
1329 a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>"
1330 instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write the file, use
1331 ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1333 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1335 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1336 intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1337 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to read
1338 from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1340 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1342 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1343 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1344 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1347 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1349 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1350 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1351 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1354 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1356 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed some
1357 time before now. Check your logic flow. flock() operates on filehandles.
1358 Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the same name?
1360 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
1362 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
1363 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
1365 =item Format not terminated
1367 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1368 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1370 =item Format %s redefined
1372 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1376 eval "format NAME =...";
1379 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1389 (or something like that).
1391 =item %s found where operator expected
1393 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1394 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
1395 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
1396 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1398 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1400 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1402 =item gethostent not implemented
1404 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1405 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1408 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1410 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1411 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1413 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1415 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1416 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1418 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1420 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did
1421 you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1422 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1424 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1426 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1427 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1428 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1431 =item glob failed (%s)
1433 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1434 and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob> pattern
1435 that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero status. If
1436 the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a coredump, this may
1437 also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so, you should change all of
1438 the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables
1439 refer to it as if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise,
1440 make them all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl
1441 will think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1442 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1444 =item Glob not terminated
1446 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1447 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1448 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1449 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1451 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1453 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1454 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1456 =item goto must have label
1458 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1459 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1461 =item %s had compilation errors
1463 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1465 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1467 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1468 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1469 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1471 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1473 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots.
1474 This is now heavily deprecated.
1476 =item %s has too many errors
1478 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1479 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1481 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1483 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1484 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1485 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1487 =item Identifier too long
1489 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1490 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1491 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1492 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1494 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1496 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1498 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1500 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary
1501 number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending
1504 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1506 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1507 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this
1508 error when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason,
1509 your version of Perl appears to have been built without this support.
1510 Talk to your Perl administrator.
1512 =item Illegal division by zero
1514 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1515 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1517 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1519 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F,
1520 a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number
1521 stopped before the illegal character.
1523 =item Illegal modulus zero
1525 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1526 don't take to this kindly.
1528 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1530 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1531 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1533 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1535 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1537 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1539 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1540 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1542 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1544 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1545 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1547 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1549 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1550 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1551 used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1553 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1555 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name or
1556 CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and didn't see the
1557 expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was ignored.
1559 =item (in cleanup) %s
1561 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised the
1562 indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the system at
1563 arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of times, the
1564 warning is issued only once for any number of failures that would otherwise
1565 result in the same message being repeated.
1567 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could also
1568 result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1570 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1572 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1573 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1574 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1575 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1576 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1577 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1578 for more information.
1580 =item Insecure directory in %s
1582 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1583 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1586 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1588 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1589 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1590 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1591 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1592 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1594 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1596 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1597 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1598 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1599 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1600 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1601 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1602 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1604 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1606 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1607 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for your
1608 architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number. On a
1609 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1610 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1611 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1612 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1613 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1616 =item internal disaster in regexp
1618 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1620 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1622 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1623 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1624 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1625 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1626 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1627 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1628 and execute the specified command.
1630 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1632 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1634 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1636 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1637 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators
1638 arguments found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators
1641 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1643 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1644 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1646 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1648 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not recognized
1649 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1651 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1653 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1654 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1656 =item invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
1658 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1659 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1661 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1663 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1664 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute
1665 had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated
1666 too soon. See L<attributes>.
1668 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1670 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1671 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1674 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1676 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1677 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1680 =item ioctl is not implemented
1682 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1683 strange for a machine that supports C.
1685 =item junk on end of regexp
1687 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1689 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1691 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1692 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1693 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1695 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1697 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1698 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1701 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1703 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1704 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1707 =item leaving effective %s failed
1709 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1710 effective uids or gids failed.
1712 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1714 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to
1715 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1717 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1719 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1720 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context.
1721 See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1723 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1725 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1733 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
1734 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
1735 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1736 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
1738 =item %s matches null string many times
1740 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1741 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
1743 =item % may only be used in unpack
1745 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1746 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
1747 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1749 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1751 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1752 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1754 =item Method %s not permitted
1758 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1760 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1761 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1762 ended earlier on the current line.
1764 =item Misplaced _ in number
1766 (W syntax) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1768 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1770 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1771 double-quotish context.
1773 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1775 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1776 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1778 =item Missing command in piped open
1780 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1781 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1783 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1785 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
1786 have a name with which they can be found.
1788 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1790 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1791 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1792 one line to the next.
1794 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
1796 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1797 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1799 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1801 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1802 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1803 you were last editing.
1805 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
1807 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1808 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
1809 the previous line just because you saw this message.
1811 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1813 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1814 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1815 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1817 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1820 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1822 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1824 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1825 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1828 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1830 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1831 be created for some peculiar reason.
1833 =item Module name must be constant
1835 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1837 =item Module name required with -M option
1839 (F) The C<-M> option says that Perl should load some module, but you
1840 omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
1843 =item msg%s not implemented
1845 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1847 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1849 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
1850 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1852 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
1854 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
1855 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.
1856 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1858 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
1860 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
1861 which must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z
1862 to indicate what sort of string is to be unpacked.
1863 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1865 =item / must follow a numeric type
1867 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
1868 but this did not follow some numeric unpack specification.
1869 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1871 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
1873 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that
1876 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
1878 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
1879 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
1880 if you want to localize a package variable.
1882 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1884 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1885 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1886 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
1887 provided for this purpose.
1889 =item Negative length
1891 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1892 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1894 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1896 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1897 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1899 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1900 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1902 =item %s never introduced
1904 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
1905 before it could possibly have been used.
1907 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1909 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1910 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1911 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1914 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1916 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1918 =item No comma allowed after %s
1920 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1921 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1922 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1924 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1925 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1926 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1927 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1928 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1929 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1930 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1931 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1932 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1933 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1934 this error was triggered?
1936 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1938 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1939 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1940 want to pipe the output from this command.
1942 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1944 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1945 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1946 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1947 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1948 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1951 =item No dbm on this machine
1953 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1954 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1956 =item No DBsub routine
1958 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1959 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1960 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1961 ordinary subroutine call.
1963 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
1965 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1966 and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't find
1967 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1969 =item No input file after < on command line
1971 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1972 and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1973 from which to read data for stdin.
1977 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1978 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1980 =item "no" not allowed in expression
1982 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
1983 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
1985 =item No output file after > on command line
1987 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1988 and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1989 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1991 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
1993 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1994 and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't find the
1995 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1997 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
1999 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our" declarations,
2000 because that doesn't make much sense under existing semantics. Such
2001 syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2003 =item No Perl script found in input
2005 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2006 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2008 =item No setregid available
2010 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2013 =item No setreuid available
2015 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2018 =item No space allowed after -%c
2020 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow immediately
2021 after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2023 =item No %s specified for -%c
2025 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2026 you haven't specified one.
2028 =item No such pipe open
2030 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2031 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
2032 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2034 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2036 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2037 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2038 array indices for that to work.
2040 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2042 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
2043 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
2044 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
2045 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2047 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2049 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not
2050 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on
2053 =item Not a CODE reference
2055 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2056 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2057 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2058 See also L<perlref>.
2060 =item Not a format reference
2062 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2063 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2065 =item Not a GLOB reference
2067 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
2068 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2069 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
2070 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2072 =item Not a HASH reference
2074 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
2075 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2076 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2078 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2080 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
2081 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2082 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2084 =item Not a perl script
2086 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2087 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2090 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2092 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
2093 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
2094 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2096 =item Not a subroutine reference
2098 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2099 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2100 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
2101 See also L<perlref>.
2103 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2105 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2106 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2108 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2110 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2112 =item Not enough format arguments
2114 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
2119 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2120 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2123 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2125 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2126 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2127 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
2128 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
2131 =item Null filename used
2133 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
2134 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2136 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2138 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
2140 =item Null picture in formline
2142 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2143 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2144 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2148 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2150 =item NULL regexp argument
2152 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2154 =item NULL regexp parameter
2156 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2158 =item Number too long
2160 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
2161 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
2162 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
2163 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
2165 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2167 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors. The
2168 octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a future
2171 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2173 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2174 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See L<perlport> for
2175 more on portability concerns.
2177 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2179 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2181 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
2182 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2184 =item Offset outside string
2186 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2187 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
2188 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
2189 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2193 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2197 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2199 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2201 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
2202 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
2203 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
2204 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
2205 true. See L<overload>.
2207 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2209 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
2210 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
2211 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
2212 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
2213 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
2215 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2217 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before in the
2218 current lexical scope.
2220 =item Out of memory!
2222 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2223 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl
2224 has no option but to exit immediately.
2226 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2228 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2229 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2230 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2231 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2233 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2235 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2236 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
2238 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2239 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2240 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
2241 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
2242 error is trappable I<once>.
2244 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2246 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2247 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2248 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2250 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2252 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
2253 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
2255 =item @ outside of string
2257 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2258 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2260 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2262 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific
2263 handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though
2264 it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute name, instead.
2269 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2274 (P) An internal error.
2276 =item panic: ck_grep
2278 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2280 =item panic: ck_split
2282 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2284 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2286 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2287 are in the savestack.
2289 =item panic: del_backref
2291 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2296 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2297 it wasn't an eval context.
2299 =item panic: do_match
2301 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2303 =item panic: do_split
2305 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2307 =item panic: do_subst
2309 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2311 =item panic: do_trans
2313 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2317 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2321 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2322 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2324 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2326 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2328 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2330 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2332 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2334 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2338 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2339 it wasn't a block context.
2341 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2343 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2345 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2347 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2348 invalid enum on the top of it.
2350 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2352 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2353 references to an object.
2357 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2359 =item panic: mapstart
2361 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2363 =item panic: null array
2365 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2367 =item panic: pad_alloc
2369 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2370 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2372 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2374 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2375 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2377 =item panic: pad_free po
2379 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2381 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2383 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2384 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2386 =item panic: pad_sv po
2388 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2390 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2392 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2393 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2395 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2397 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2399 =item panic: pp_iter
2401 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2403 =item panic: realloc
2405 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2407 =item panic: restartop
2409 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2410 didn't supply the destination.
2414 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2415 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2417 =item panic: scan_num
2419 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2421 =item panic: sv_insert
2423 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2426 =item panic: top_env
2428 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2432 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2434 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2436 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2442 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2444 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2446 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2448 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2449 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2450 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2452 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2454 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2455 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
2457 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2459 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2461 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2462 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2465 are supported and installed on your system.
2466 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2468 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2469 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2470 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
2471 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
2472 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
2473 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
2474 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
2475 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
2476 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2478 =item Permission denied
2480 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2482 =item pid %x not a child
2484 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process
2485 which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2486 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2488 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2490 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2491 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2493 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2495 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2496 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2497 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the parentheses
2498 shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2500 You probably wrote something like this:
2507 when you should have written this:
2514 If you really want comments, build your list the
2515 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2519 'b', # another comment
2522 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2524 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2525 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2526 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2529 You probably wrote something like this:
2533 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2534 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2538 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2540 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2541 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2542 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2543 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2545 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2547 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2548 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2550 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2552 (W deprecated) You have written something like this:
2556 use attrs qw(locked);
2559 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2565 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2566 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2568 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2570 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2574 is now misinterpreted as
2578 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2579 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2580 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2583 =item Premature end of script headers
2587 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2589 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before
2590 now. Check your logic flow.
2592 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2594 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before
2595 now. Check your logic flow.
2597 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2599 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2600 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2601 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2602 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2605 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2607 (S unsafe) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2608 or defined with a different function prototype.
2610 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2612 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2613 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2614 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2615 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2617 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
2619 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
2620 before now. Check your logic flow.
2622 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2624 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2626 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2628 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had already
2631 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2633 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2634 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2635 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2637 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2639 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2640 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2642 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2644 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2645 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2647 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2649 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2650 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2651 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2652 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2654 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2655 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2656 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2657 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2659 =item Reference is already weak
2661 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2662 Doing so has no effect.
2664 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2666 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2667 reference count of other than 1.
2669 =item regexp memory corruption
2671 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2672 expression compiler gave it.
2674 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2676 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2677 could match an empty string.
2679 =item regexp out of space
2681 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2683 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
2685 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
2686 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2688 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
2690 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
2691 your signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2693 =item Reversed %s= operator
2695 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2696 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2698 =item Runaway format
2700 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2701 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2702 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2703 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2704 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2706 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2708 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single
2709 element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
2710 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a
2711 scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while
2712 C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list
2713 context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only
2716 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2717 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2718 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2721 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2723 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
2724 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated
2725 by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar,
2726 both when assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while
2727 C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list
2728 context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only
2731 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2732 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2733 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2736 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2738 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2739 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2741 =item Search pattern not terminated
2743 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2744 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2745 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2747 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2749 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle
2750 that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2752 =item select not implemented
2754 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2756 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2758 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
2759 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2761 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2763 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2764 that had previously been marked as free.
2766 =item sem%s not implemented
2768 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2770 =item send() on closed socket %s
2772 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2773 Check your logic flow.
2775 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2777 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2780 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2782 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2783 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2785 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2787 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2790 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2792 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2793 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2795 =item 500 Server error
2801 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
2802 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error
2803 text varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen
2804 variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted",
2805 "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and
2806 "Did not produce a valid header".
2808 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2810 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2811 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2812 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2813 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2814 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2815 for more information:
2817 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2818 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2819 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2820 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2821 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2823 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2825 =item setegid() not implemented
2827 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2828 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2831 =item seteuid() not implemented
2833 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't support
2834 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2837 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
2839 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no arguments,
2840 unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process group ID.
2842 =item setrgid() not implemented
2844 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2845 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2848 =item setruid() not implemented
2850 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't support
2851 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2854 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
2856 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did
2857 you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2858 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
2860 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2862 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2863 because the world might have written on it already.
2865 =item shm%s not implemented
2867 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2869 =item <> should be quotes
2871 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
2874 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
2876 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
2877 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true
2878 or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string,
2879 which is probably not what you had in mind.
2881 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
2883 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
2886 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2888 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps
2889 you put it into the wrong package?
2891 =item sort is now a reserved word
2893 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2894 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2896 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2898 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2899 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2900 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2902 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2904 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2905 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2909 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2910 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2911 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2913 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2915 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2916 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2917 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2918 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2921 =item Stat on unopened file <%s>
2923 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2924 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2926 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2928 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2929 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the quantifier
2930 inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match "abc" provided
2931 that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>,
2932 not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2934 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2936 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2937 Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2940 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2942 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2946 eval "sub name { ... }";
2949 =item Substitution loop
2951 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2952 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2953 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2954 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2956 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2958 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2959 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2960 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2962 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2964 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2965 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2966 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2968 =item substr outside of string
2970 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2971 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the length
2972 of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if substr is
2973 used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an assignment or as a
2974 subroutine argument for example).
2976 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2978 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2979 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2981 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2983 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2984 real and effective uids or gids.
2988 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2990 A keyword is misspelled.
2991 A semicolon is missing.
2993 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2994 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2995 A closing quote is missing.
2997 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2998 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2999 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3000 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3001 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3002 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3003 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3004 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3005 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
3007 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3009 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
3010 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
3015 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3017 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3019 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3020 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3021 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3022 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3024 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3026 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before
3027 now. Check your logic flow.
3029 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3031 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
3032 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3034 =item tell() on unopened file
3036 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was
3037 either never opened or has since been closed.
3039 =item Test on unopened file <%s>
3041 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that
3042 isn't open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3044 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3046 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
3047 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3056 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
3057 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3059 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3061 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3062 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3063 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3064 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3067 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3069 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3070 to the probings of Configure.
3072 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
3074 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
3075 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
3076 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
3078 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3080 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3082 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3083 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
3084 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
3085 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
3086 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
3087 %ENV which produced the warning.
3089 =item times not implemented
3091 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
3092 you're not running on Unix.
3094 =item Too few args to syscall
3096 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3097 system call to call, silly dilly.
3099 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3101 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3102 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3103 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3104 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3107 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3108 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
3109 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
3110 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3112 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3113 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3115 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3117 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3118 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3119 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3121 =item Too late to run %s block
3123 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3124 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3125 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using
3126 C<use> instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do>
3127 inside a BEGIN block.
3129 =item Too many args to syscall
3131 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3133 =item Too many arguments for %s
3135 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3139 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3140 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3145 =item trailing \ in regexp
3147 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
3150 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3152 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3153 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3154 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3156 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3158 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3161 =item truncate not implemented
3163 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3164 Configure knows about.
3166 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3168 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3169 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3170 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3171 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3173 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
3175 (W umask) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
3176 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
3178 =item umask not implemented
3180 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
3181 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3183 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3185 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3187 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3189 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3190 execution contexts were entered and left.
3192 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3194 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3195 values were temporarily localized.
3197 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3199 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3200 blocks were entered and left.
3202 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3204 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
3205 mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3207 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3209 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3210 another package? See L<perlform>.
3212 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3214 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
3215 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3217 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3219 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
3220 has since been undefined.
3222 =item Undefined subroutine called
3224 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3225 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3227 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3229 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
3230 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3232 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3234 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3235 another package? See L<perlform>.
3237 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3239 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
3240 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
3242 =item %s: Undefined variable
3244 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3245 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3248 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3250 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3251 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3253 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3255 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
3257 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3259 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3260 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3261 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3263 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3265 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3266 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3267 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3268 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3270 =item unmatched [] in regexp
3272 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3273 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
3276 =item unmatched () in regexp
3278 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3279 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
3280 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
3282 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3284 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
3285 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
3286 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
3287 place you were last editing.
3289 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3291 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved
3292 word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or
3293 insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
3295 =item Unrecognized character %s
3297 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3298 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3299 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3301 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3303 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3304 by Perl inside character classes. The character was understood literally.
3306 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3308 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3309 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
3310 C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood literally.
3312 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3314 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
3317 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3319 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
3320 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
3322 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3324 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
3325 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
3326 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
3328 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3330 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
3331 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
3332 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3334 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3336 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3338 =item Unsupported function %s
3340 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3341 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3343 =item Unsupported function fork
3345 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3347 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
3348 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
3349 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3351 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3353 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3354 least that's what Configure thought.
3356 =item Unterminated attribute list
3358 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start
3359 of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3360 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute
3361 too soon. See L<attributes>.
3363 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3365 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing an
3366 attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3367 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3368 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3370 =item Unterminated <> operator
3372 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3373 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
3374 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
3375 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3377 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3379 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3380 valid when C<untie> was called.
3382 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3384 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3385 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3386 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often this
3387 points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse your
3388 program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this if you
3389 mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3393 when you meant to say
3395 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3397 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3398 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3403 when you should have said
3407 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3408 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3409 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3410 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3411 L<perlref> for more on this.
3413 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3415 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3417 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3419 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
3420 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3422 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3424 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3425 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3427 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3429 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3430 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3431 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3433 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3435 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are
3436 looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines
3437 to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>),
3438 not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<< $obj->bar() >>).
3440 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for methods'
3441 C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing code that may
3442 be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl currently issues an
3443 optional warning when non-methods use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3445 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3446 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3447 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3448 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3450 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3451 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3452 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3454 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3456 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3457 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3459 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3461 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching,
3462 both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You
3463 should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the
3464 dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3466 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3468 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
3469 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way
3470 has bad side effects.
3472 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3474 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined
3475 B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
3477 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3479 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of
3480 perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3481 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a different
3482 name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine names by either
3483 adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or
3486 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
3488 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined.
3489 It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress
3490 this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3492 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3494 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
3495 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can
3496 return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which
3497 is probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3498 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3500 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3502 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3503 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer than 1024
3504 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024 characters.
3506 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3508 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3509 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3510 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3511 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3512 on the front of your variable.
3514 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
3516 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current scope or
3517 statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This
3518 is almost always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will
3519 still exist until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it
3522 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3524 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3525 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3526 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3527 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3529 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3531 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3532 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3533 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3534 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3535 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3536 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3539 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3540 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3541 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3542 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3544 =item Variable syntax
3546 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3547 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3550 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3552 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3553 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3555 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3556 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3557 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3558 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3559 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3560 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3562 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3563 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3564 will I<never> share the given variable.
3566 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3567 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3568 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3569 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3572 =item Version number must be a constant number
3574 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3575 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3578 =item Warning: something's wrong
3580 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3581 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3583 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3585 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3586 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3588 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3590 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3591 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3592 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3593 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3597 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3601 but in actual fact, you got
3605 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3607 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
3609 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before
3610 now. Check your logic flow.
3612 =item X outside of string
3614 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3615 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3617 =item x outside of string
3619 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3620 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3622 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3624 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3626 =item Xsub called in sort
3628 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3630 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3632 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3633 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3634 Use a filename instead.
3636 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3638 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3639 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3640 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3641 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3643 =item You need to quote "%s"
3645 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately,
3646 you already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3647 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3648 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)