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<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
141 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
143 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
149 or a hash or array slice, such as:
151 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
152 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
154 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
156 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
157 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
160 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
162 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
163 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
164 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
166 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
168 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
169 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
171 =item assertion botched: %s
173 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
175 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
177 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
179 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
181 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
182 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
183 know which context to supply to the right side.
185 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
187 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
188 greater than or equal to zero.
190 =item Attempt to access to key '%_' in fixed hash
192 (F) A hash has been marked as READONLY at the C level to turn it
193 into a "record" with a fixed set of keys. The failing code
194 has attempted to get or set the value of a key which does not
195 exist or to delete a key.
197 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
199 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
200 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
201 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
207 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
209 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
210 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
213 bless $self, "$proto";
215 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
217 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
218 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
219 outside any of those arenas.
221 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
223 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
224 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
225 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
226 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
228 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
230 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
231 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
232 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
233 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
236 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
238 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
240 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
242 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
243 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
244 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
245 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
246 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
247 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
250 =item Attempt to join self
252 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
253 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
254 to move the join() to some other thread.
256 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
258 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
259 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
260 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
261 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
262 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
265 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
267 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
268 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
269 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
271 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
273 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
274 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
275 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
276 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
278 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
280 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
281 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
282 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
284 =item Bad filehandle: %s
286 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
287 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
288 open(), or did it in another package.
290 =item Bad free() ignored
292 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
293 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
294 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
296 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
297 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
298 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
302 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
304 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
306 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
307 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
310 =item Badly placed ()'s
312 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
313 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
316 =item Bad name after %s::
318 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
319 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
328 $sym = "mypack::$var";
330 =item Bad realloc() ignored
332 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
333 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
334 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
336 =item Bad symbol for array
338 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
339 wasn't a symbol table entry.
341 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
343 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
344 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
346 =item Bad symbol for hash
348 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
349 wasn't a symbol table entry.
351 =item Bareword found in conditional
353 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
354 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
355 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
359 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
362 use constant TYPO => 1;
363 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
365 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
367 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
369 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
370 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
371 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
373 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
375 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
376 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
377 you need to predeclare a package?
379 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
381 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
382 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
385 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
387 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
388 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
389 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
390 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
391 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
393 =item \1 better written as $1
395 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
396 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
397 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
398 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
399 there are more than 9 backreferences.
401 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
403 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
404 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
405 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
407 =item bind() on closed socket %s
409 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
410 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
412 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
414 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
415 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
417 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
419 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
421 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
423 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
426 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
428 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
429 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
431 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
433 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
434 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
435 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
437 =item Callback called exit
439 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
440 exited by calling exit.
442 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
444 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
445 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
446 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
447 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
448 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
449 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
450 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
451 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
453 =item / cannot take a count
455 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
456 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
459 =item Can't bless non-reference value
461 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
462 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
464 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
466 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
467 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
468 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
470 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
472 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
473 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
474 like this will reproduce the error:
477 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
478 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
480 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
482 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
483 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
484 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
485 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
487 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
489 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
490 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
491 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
492 Something like this will reproduce the error:
495 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
496 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
498 =item Can't chdir to %s
500 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
501 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
503 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
505 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
508 =item Can't coerce array into hash
510 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
511 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
512 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
514 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
516 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
517 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
527 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
529 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
531 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
532 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
534 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
536 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
537 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
539 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
541 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
542 quotas or other plumbing problems.
544 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
546 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
547 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
548 extended for other types of variables in future.
550 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
552 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
553 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
555 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
557 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
558 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
560 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
562 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
565 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
567 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
568 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
569 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
571 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
573 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
574 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
575 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
577 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
579 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
580 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
581 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
583 =item Can't do setegid!
585 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
588 =item Can't do seteuid!
590 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
592 =item Can't do setuid
594 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
595 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
596 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
597 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
598 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
599 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
601 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
603 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
604 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
606 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
608 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
609 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
612 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
614 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
615 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
616 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
617 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
618 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
619 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
624 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
625 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
626 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
628 =item Can't execute %s
630 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
631 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
633 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
635 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
636 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
638 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
640 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
641 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
642 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
643 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
645 =item Can't find label %s
647 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
648 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
650 =item Can't find %s on PATH
652 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
655 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
657 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
658 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
659 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
661 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
663 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
664 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
665 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
667 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
669 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
670 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
671 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
673 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
675 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property for
676 example \p{Lu} is all uppercase letters. Escape the C<\p>, either
677 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
682 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
685 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
687 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
688 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
689 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
690 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
691 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
692 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
693 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
694 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
695 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
696 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
697 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
698 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
699 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
700 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
701 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
703 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
705 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
706 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
708 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
710 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
711 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
713 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
715 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
716 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
718 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
720 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
721 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
722 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
723 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
725 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
727 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
728 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
729 probably don't want to.)
731 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
733 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
734 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
735 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
736 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
738 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
740 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
741 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
742 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
743 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
744 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
745 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
747 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
749 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
750 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
751 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
752 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
753 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
754 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
757 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
759 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
760 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
761 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
764 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
766 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
767 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
768 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
769 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
771 =item Can't localize through a reference
773 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
774 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
775 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
776 that $ref will still be a reference.
778 =item Can't locate %s
780 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
781 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
782 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
783 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
784 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
785 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
786 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
788 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
790 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
791 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
792 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
793 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
795 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
797 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
798 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
799 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
801 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
803 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
804 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
805 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
807 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
809 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
810 doesn't seem to exist.
812 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
814 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
817 =item Can't modify %s in %s
819 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
820 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
822 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
824 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
827 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
829 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
830 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
832 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
834 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
837 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
839 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
840 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
841 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
842 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
843 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
844 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
846 =item Can't open %s: %s
848 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
849 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
850 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
851 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
854 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
856 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
857 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
858 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
859 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
861 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
863 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
864 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
865 the command line for writing.
867 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
869 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
870 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
871 command line for reading.
873 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
875 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
876 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
877 the command line for writing.
879 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
881 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
882 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
885 =item Can't open perl script%s: %s
887 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
889 =item Can't read CRTL environ
891 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
892 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
893 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
894 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
897 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
899 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
900 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
901 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
902 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
904 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
906 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
907 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
908 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
909 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
910 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
911 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
913 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
915 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
916 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
917 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
919 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
921 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
922 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
924 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
926 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
927 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
929 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
931 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
932 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
933 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
935 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
937 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
940 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
942 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
943 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
946 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
948 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
949 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
950 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
951 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
954 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
956 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
957 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
959 =item Can't stat script "%s"
961 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
962 open already. Bizarre.
964 =item Can't swap uid and euid
966 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
969 =item Can't take log of %g
971 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
972 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
973 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
976 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
978 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
979 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
980 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
982 =item Can't undef active subroutine
984 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
985 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
986 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
990 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
991 as the main Perl stack.
993 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
995 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
996 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
997 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
998 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1000 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1002 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1003 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1006 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1008 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1009 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1011 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1013 (P) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1014 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1015 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1017 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1019 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1020 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1022 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1024 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1025 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1026 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1028 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1030 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1033 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1035 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1036 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1037 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1038 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1041 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1043 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1044 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1045 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1046 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1049 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1051 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1052 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1053 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1055 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1057 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1058 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1060 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1062 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1063 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1064 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1066 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1068 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1069 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1070 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1071 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1072 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1075 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1077 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1078 references can be weakened.
1080 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1082 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1083 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1084 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1086 =item Character in "C" format wrapped
1092 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1093 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1094 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1098 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1101 =item Character in "c" format wrapped
1107 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1108 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1109 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1111 pack("c", $x & 255);
1113 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1116 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1118 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1120 =item %s: Command not found
1122 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1123 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1125 =item Compilation failed in require
1127 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1128 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1129 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1131 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1133 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1134 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1135 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1136 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1137 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1138 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1139 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1140 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1141 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1143 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1145 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1146 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1147 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1149 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1151 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1152 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1153 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1154 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1157 =item Constant is not %s reference
1159 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1160 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1161 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1162 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1163 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1165 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1167 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1168 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1169 commentary and workarounds.
1171 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1173 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1174 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1177 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1179 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1180 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1182 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1184 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1186 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1188 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1189 expression compiler gave it.
1191 =item corrupted regexp program
1193 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1196 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1198 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1200 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1202 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1203 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1204 redirected it with select().)
1206 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1208 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1209 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1211 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1213 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1214 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1215 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1216 which case it indicates something else.
1218 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1220 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1221 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1222 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1224 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1226 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1227 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1228 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1230 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1232 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1233 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1234 that triggers this error.
1236 =item Did not produce a valid header
1240 =item %s did not return a true value
1242 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1243 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1244 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1245 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1247 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1249 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1252 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1254 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1255 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1258 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1260 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1261 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1266 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1267 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1269 =item Document contains no data
1273 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1275 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1277 =item do_study: out of memory
1279 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1281 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1283 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1284 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1285 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1286 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1287 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1288 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1289 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1290 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1292 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1294 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1295 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1297 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1299 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1302 =item elseif should be elsif
1304 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1305 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1306 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1307 unlikely to be what you want.
1311 (F) Empty C<\p{}> or C<\P{}>.
1313 =item entering effective %s failed
1315 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1316 effective uids or gids failed.
1318 =item Error converting file specification %s
1320 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1321 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1322 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1323 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1324 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1326 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1328 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1329 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1330 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1332 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1334 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1335 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1336 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1337 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1338 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1339 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1341 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1343 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1344 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1345 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1347 =item Excessively long <> operator
1349 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1350 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1351 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1352 variable and glob that.
1354 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1356 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1358 =item Exiting eval via %s
1360 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1361 goto, or a loop control statement.
1363 =item Exiting format via %s
1365 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1366 goto, or a loop control statement.
1368 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1370 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1371 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1372 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1374 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1376 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1377 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1379 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1381 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1382 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1384 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1386 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1387 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1388 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1389 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1391 =item %s: Expression syntax
1393 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1394 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1396 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1398 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1399 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1400 routines has been prematurely ended.
1402 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1404 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1405 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1406 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1407 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1408 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1410 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1412 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1413 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1414 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1415 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1417 =item fcntl is not implemented
1419 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1420 PDP-11 or something?
1422 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1424 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1425 to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1426 or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1427 the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1429 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1431 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1432 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1433 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1434 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1436 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1438 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1439 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1440 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1443 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1445 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1446 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1447 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1450 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1452 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1453 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1454 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1457 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex;
1459 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1461 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
1462 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
1463 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1465 =item Format not terminated
1467 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1468 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1470 =item Format %s redefined
1472 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1475 no warnings 'redefine';
1476 eval "format NAME =...";
1479 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1489 (or something like that).
1491 =item %s found where operator expected
1493 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1494 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1495 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1496 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1498 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1500 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1502 =item gethostent not implemented
1504 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1505 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1508 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1510 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1511 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1513 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1515 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1516 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1518 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1520 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1521 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1522 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1524 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1526 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1527 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1528 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1531 =item glob failed (%s)
1533 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1534 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1535 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1536 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1537 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1538 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1539 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1540 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1541 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1542 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1543 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1545 =item Glob not terminated
1547 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1548 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1549 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1550 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1552 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1554 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1555 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1557 =item goto must have label
1559 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1560 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1562 =item %s had compilation errors
1564 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1566 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1568 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1569 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1570 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1572 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1574 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1575 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1577 =item %s has too many errors
1579 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1580 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1582 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1584 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1585 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1586 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1588 =item Identifier too long
1590 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1591 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1592 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1593 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1595 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1597 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1599 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1601 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1602 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1605 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1607 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1608 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1609 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1610 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1611 to your Perl administrator.
1613 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1615 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1616 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1618 =item Illegal division by zero
1620 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1621 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1624 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1626 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1627 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1628 number stopped before the illegal character.
1630 =item Illegal modulus zero
1632 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1633 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1635 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1637 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1638 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1640 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1642 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1644 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1646 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1647 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1649 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1651 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1652 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1654 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1656 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1657 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1658 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1660 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1662 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1663 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1664 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1667 =item (in cleanup) %s
1669 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1670 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1671 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1672 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1673 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1675 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1676 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1678 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1680 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1681 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1682 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1683 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1684 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1685 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1686 L<perlsec> for more information.
1688 =item Insecure directory in %s
1690 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1691 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1692 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1694 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1696 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1697 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1698 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1699 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1700 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1702 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1704 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1705 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1706 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1707 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1708 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1709 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1710 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1711 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1714 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1716 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1717 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1720 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1722 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1723 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1724 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1725 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1726 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1727 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1729 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1731 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1732 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1735 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1737 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1738 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1739 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1740 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1742 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1744 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1745 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1747 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1749 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1750 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1752 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1754 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1755 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1757 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1759 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1760 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1761 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1762 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1763 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1765 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator
1767 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1768 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1770 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1772 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1773 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1774 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1777 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1779 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1780 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1783 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1785 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1787 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1790 =item ioctl is not implemented
1792 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1793 strange for a machine that supports C.
1795 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1797 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1798 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1800 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1802 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1803 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1805 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1807 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1808 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1811 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1813 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1816 =item junk on end of regexp
1818 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1820 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1822 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1823 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1826 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1828 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1829 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1832 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1834 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1835 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1838 =item leaving effective %s failed
1840 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1841 effective uids or gids failed.
1843 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1845 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1846 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1849 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1851 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1852 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1853 instead on the filehandle.)
1855 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1857 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1858 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1859 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1861 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex;
1863 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1865 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1866 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1867 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1869 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1871 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1878 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1879 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1880 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1881 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
1883 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
1885 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
1886 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
1887 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
1888 when the function is called.
1890 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
1892 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
1894 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
1896 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
1897 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
1899 =item %s matches null string many times in regex;
1901 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1903 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1904 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
1905 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1908 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
1910 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
1911 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
1914 =item % may only be used in unpack
1916 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1917 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1918 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1920 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1922 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1923 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1925 =item Method %s not permitted
1929 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1931 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1932 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1933 ended earlier on the current line.
1935 =item Misplaced _ in number
1937 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
1938 separate two digits.
1940 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1942 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1943 double-quotish context.
1945 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1947 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1948 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1950 =item Missing command in piped open
1952 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
1953 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
1956 =item Missing name in "my sub"
1958 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
1959 they have a name with which they can be found.
1961 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1963 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
1964 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
1965 can vary from one line to the next.
1967 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
1969 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1970 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1972 =item Missing right brace on %s
1974 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
1976 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1978 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
1979 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
1982 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
1984 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1985 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
1986 the previous line just because you saw this message.
1988 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1990 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1991 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1992 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1994 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1997 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1999 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2000 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2003 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2004 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2007 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2009 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2010 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2013 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2015 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2016 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2018 =item Module name must be constant
2020 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2022 =item Module name required with -%c option
2024 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2025 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2026 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2028 =item msg%s not implemented
2030 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2032 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2034 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2035 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2037 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
2039 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2040 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2041 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2043 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
2045 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
2046 must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
2047 of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2049 =item / must follow a numeric type
2051 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
2052 follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2054 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2056 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2059 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2061 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2062 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2063 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2065 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2067 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2068 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2069 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2070 provided for this purpose.
2072 =item Negative length
2074 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2075 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2077 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2079 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2080 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2081 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2083 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2084 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2086 =item %s never introduced
2088 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2089 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2091 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2093 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2094 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2095 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2096 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2098 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2100 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2102 =item No comma allowed after %s
2104 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2105 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2106 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2108 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2109 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2110 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2111 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2112 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2113 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2114 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2115 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2116 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2117 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2118 this error was triggered?
2120 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2122 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2123 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2124 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2126 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2128 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2129 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2130 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2131 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2132 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2134 =item No dbm on this machine
2136 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2137 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2139 =item No DBsub routine
2141 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2142 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2143 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2144 ordinary subroutine call.
2146 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2148 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2149 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2150 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2152 =item No input file after < on command line
2154 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2155 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2156 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2160 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2161 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2163 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2165 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2166 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2168 =item No output file after > on command line
2170 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2171 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2172 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2174 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2176 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2177 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2178 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2180 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2182 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2183 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2184 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2186 =item No Perl script found in input
2188 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2189 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2191 =item No setregid available
2193 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2196 =item No setreuid available
2198 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2201 =item No space allowed after -%c
2203 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2204 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2206 =item No %s specified for -%c
2208 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2209 you haven't specified one.
2211 =item No such class %s
2213 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2214 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2216 =item No such pipe open
2218 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2219 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2220 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2222 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2224 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2225 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2226 array indices for that to work.
2228 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2230 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2231 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2232 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2233 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2235 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2237 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2238 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2239 names on your system.
2241 =item Not a CODE reference
2243 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2244 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2245 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2248 =item Not a format reference
2250 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2251 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2253 =item Not a GLOB reference
2255 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2256 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2257 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2258 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2260 =item Not a HASH reference
2262 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2263 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2264 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2266 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2268 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2269 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2270 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2272 =item Not a perl script
2274 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2275 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2278 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2280 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2281 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2282 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2284 =item Not a subroutine reference
2286 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2287 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2288 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2291 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2293 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2294 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2296 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2298 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2300 =item Not enough format arguments
2302 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2303 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2307 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2308 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2311 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2313 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2314 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2315 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2316 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2317 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2319 =item Null filename used
2321 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2322 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2324 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2326 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2329 =item Null picture in formline
2331 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2332 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2333 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2337 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2339 =item NULL regexp argument
2341 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2343 =item NULL regexp parameter
2345 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2347 =item Number too long
2349 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2350 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2351 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2352 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2355 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2357 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2358 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2361 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2363 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2364 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2365 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2367 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2369 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2371 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2372 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2374 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2376 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2377 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2379 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2381 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2382 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2384 =item Offset outside string
2386 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2387 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2388 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2389 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2391 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2393 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2394 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2396 =item %s() on unopened %s
2398 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2399 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2400 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2404 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2408 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2410 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2412 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2413 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2414 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2415 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2417 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2419 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2420 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2421 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2422 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2425 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2427 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2428 in the current lexical scope.
2430 =item Out of memory!
2432 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2433 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2434 no option but to exit immediately.
2436 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2438 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2439 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2440 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2441 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2443 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2445 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2446 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2449 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2450 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2451 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2452 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2453 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2454 where the failed request happened.
2456 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2458 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2459 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2460 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2462 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2464 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2465 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2468 =item @ outside of string
2470 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2471 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2473 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2475 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2476 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2477 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2478 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2480 =item Package '%s' not found (did you use the incorrect case?)
2482 (W misc) You included a package file via C<use>, but the package name
2483 did not match the file name. It's possible that you misspelled the
2488 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2489 page. See L<perlform>.
2493 (P) An internal error.
2495 =item panic: ck_grep
2497 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2499 =item panic: ck_split
2501 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2503 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2505 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2506 there are in the savestack.
2508 =item panic: del_backref
2510 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2515 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2516 it wasn't an eval context.
2518 =item panic: pp_match%s
2520 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2523 =item panic: do_subst
2525 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2528 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2530 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2535 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2539 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2540 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2542 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2544 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2546 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2548 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2550 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2552 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2556 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2557 it wasn't a block context.
2559 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2561 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2564 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2566 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2567 invalid enum on the top of it.
2569 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2571 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2572 references to an object.
2576 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2578 =item panic: mapstart
2580 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2582 =item panic: null array
2584 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2586 =item panic: pad_alloc
2588 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2589 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2591 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2593 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2594 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2596 =item panic: pad_free po
2598 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2600 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2602 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2603 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2605 =item panic: pad_sv po
2607 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2609 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2611 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2612 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2614 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2616 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2618 =item panic: pp_iter
2620 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2622 =item panic: pp_split
2624 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2626 =item panic: realloc
2628 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2630 =item panic: restartop
2632 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2633 didn't supply the destination.
2637 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2638 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2640 =item panic: scan_num
2642 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2644 =item panic: sv_insert
2646 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2649 =item panic: top_env
2651 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2655 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2657 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2659 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2660 to even) byte length.
2662 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2664 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2670 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2672 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2674 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2676 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2677 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2678 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2680 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2682 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2683 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2685 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2687 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2689 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2690 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2693 are supported and installed on your system.
2694 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2696 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2697 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2698 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2699 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2700 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2701 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2702 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2703 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2704 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2705 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2707 =item perlio: argument list not closed for layer "%s"
2709 (S) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you forgot
2710 the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
2711 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
2712 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
2713 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
2714 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2716 =item perlio: invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2718 (S) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2719 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2720 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2721 list was terminated too soon.
2723 =item perlio: unknown layer "%s"
2725 (S) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
2726 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
2727 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
2728 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
2729 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
2730 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2732 =item Permission denied
2734 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2736 =item pid %x not a child
2738 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2739 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2740 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2742 =item P must have an explicit size
2744 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2746 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex;
2748 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2750 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2751 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2752 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2753 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2754 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2755 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2757 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2759 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2761 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2762 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2763 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2764 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2765 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2766 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2768 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2770 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2772 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2773 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2774 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2775 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2776 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2777 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2779 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex;
2781 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2783 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2784 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2785 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2786 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2787 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2789 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2791 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2792 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2794 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2796 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2797 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2798 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2799 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2801 You probably wrote something like this:
2808 when you should have written this:
2815 If you really want comments, build your list the
2816 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2820 'b', # another comment
2823 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2825 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2826 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2827 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2830 You probably wrote something like this:
2834 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2835 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2839 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2841 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2842 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2843 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2844 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2846 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
2848 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
2849 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
2850 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
2851 to the array you apparently lost track of.
2853 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2855 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2856 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2858 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2860 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
2864 use attrs qw(locked);
2867 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2873 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2874 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2876 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2878 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2882 is now misinterpreted as
2886 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2887 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2888 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2891 =item Premature end of script headers
2895 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2897 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
2898 before now. Check your control flow.
2900 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2902 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
2903 before now. Check your control flow.
2905 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2907 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2908 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2909 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2910 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2913 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2915 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2916 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
2918 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex;
2920 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2922 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
2923 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
2924 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2926 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression;
2928 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2930 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2931 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
2932 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
2933 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
2934 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2936 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2939 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2941 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2942 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2943 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
2944 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2946 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
2948 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
2949 before now. Check your control flow.
2951 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2953 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2955 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2957 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
2960 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2962 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
2963 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2964 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2966 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2968 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2969 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2971 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
2973 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
2974 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
2977 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2979 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
2980 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
2981 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
2982 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2984 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2985 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2986 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2987 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2989 =item Reference is already weak
2991 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2992 Doing so has no effect.
2994 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2996 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
2997 a reference count of other than 1.
2999 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex;
3001 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3003 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3004 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3005 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3006 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3008 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3011 =item regexp memory corruption
3013 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3014 expression compiler gave it.
3016 =item Regexp out of space
3018 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3021 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
3023 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3024 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3026 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
3028 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3029 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3031 =item Reversed %s= operator
3033 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3034 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3036 =item Runaway format
3038 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3039 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3040 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3041 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3042 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3044 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3046 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3047 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3048 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3049 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3050 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3051 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3052 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3054 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3055 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3056 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3059 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3061 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3062 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3063 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3064 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3065 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3066 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3067 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3069 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3070 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3071 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3074 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3076 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3077 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3078 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3079 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3081 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3083 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3084 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3086 =item Search pattern not terminated
3088 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3089 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3090 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3092 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3094 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3095 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3097 =item select not implemented
3099 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3101 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3103 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3104 the current implementation.
3106 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3108 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3109 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3111 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3113 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3114 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3116 =item sem%s not implemented
3118 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3120 =item send() on closed socket %s
3122 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3123 before now. Check your control flow.
3125 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3127 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3128 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3131 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex;
3133 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3135 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3136 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3137 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3140 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex;
3142 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3144 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3145 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3146 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3148 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex;
3150 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3152 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3153 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3154 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3156 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex;
3158 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3160 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3161 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3162 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3165 =item 500 Server error
3171 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3172 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3173 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3174 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3175 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3176 produce a valid header".
3178 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3180 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3181 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3182 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3183 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3184 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3185 Please see the following for more information:
3187 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3188 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3189 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3191 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3193 =item setegid() not implemented
3195 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3196 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3199 =item seteuid() not implemented
3201 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3202 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3205 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3207 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3208 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3211 =item setrgid() not implemented
3213 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3214 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3217 =item setruid() not implemented
3219 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3220 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3223 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3225 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3226 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3227 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3229 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3231 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3232 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3234 =item shm%s not implemented
3236 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3238 =item <> should be quotes
3240 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3243 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3245 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3246 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3247 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3248 probably not what you had in mind.
3250 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3252 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3255 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3257 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3258 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3260 =item sort is now a reserved word
3262 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3263 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3265 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3267 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3268 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3269 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3271 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3273 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3274 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3278 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3279 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3280 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3282 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3284 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3285 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3286 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3287 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3290 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3292 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3293 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3295 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3297 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3298 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3299 C<can> may break this.
3301 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3303 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3306 no warnings 'redefine';
3307 eval "sub name { ... }";
3310 =item Substitution loop
3312 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3313 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3314 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3315 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3317 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3319 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3320 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3321 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3323 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3325 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3326 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3327 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3329 =item substr outside of string
3331 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3332 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3333 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3334 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3335 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3337 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3339 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3340 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3342 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex;
3344 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3346 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3347 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3348 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3349 clustering parentheses:
3351 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3353 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3354 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3356 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex;
3358 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3360 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3361 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3362 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3364 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3366 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3367 and effective uids or gids.
3371 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3373 A keyword is misspelled.
3374 A semicolon is missing.
3376 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3377 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3378 A closing quote is missing.
3380 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3381 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3382 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3383 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3384 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3385 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3386 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3387 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3388 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3391 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3393 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3394 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3397 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3399 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3400 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3401 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3405 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3407 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3409 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3410 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3411 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3412 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3414 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3416 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3417 before now. Check your control flow.
3419 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3421 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3422 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3424 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3426 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3427 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3429 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3431 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3432 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3441 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3442 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3444 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3446 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3447 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3448 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3449 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3452 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3454 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3455 to the probings of Configure.
3457 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3459 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3460 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3461 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3464 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3466 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3468 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3469 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3470 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3471 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3472 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3473 target of the change to
3474 %ENV which produced the warning.
3476 =item times not implemented
3478 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3479 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3481 =item Too few args to syscall
3483 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3484 system call to call, silly dilly.
3486 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3488 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3489 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3490 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3491 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3494 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3495 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3496 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3497 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3499 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3500 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3502 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3504 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3505 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3506 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3508 =item Too late to run %s block
3510 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3511 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3512 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3513 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3516 =item Too many args to syscall
3518 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3520 =item Too many arguments for %s
3522 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3528 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3529 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3531 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3533 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3534 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3536 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3538 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3539 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3540 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3542 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3544 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3547 =item truncate not implemented
3549 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3550 Configure knows about.
3552 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3554 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3555 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3556 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3557 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3559 =item umask not implemented
3561 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3562 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3564 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3566 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3568 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3570 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3571 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3573 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3575 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3576 many values were temporarily localized.
3578 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3580 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3581 many blocks were entered and left.
3583 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3585 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3586 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3588 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3590 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3591 another package? See L<perlform>.
3593 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3595 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3596 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3598 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3600 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3601 since been undefined.
3603 =item Undefined subroutine called
3605 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3606 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3608 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3610 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3611 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3613 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3615 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3616 another package? See L<perlform>.
3618 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3620 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3621 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3624 =item %s: Undefined variable
3626 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3627 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3629 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3631 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3632 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3634 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3636 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3637 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3638 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3640 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3642 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3645 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3647 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3649 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex;
3651 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3653 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3654 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3655 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3656 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3657 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3660 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3661 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3663 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3665 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3666 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3667 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3669 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3671 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3672 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3673 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3674 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3676 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3678 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
3679 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
3681 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
3682 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
3685 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3687 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3688 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3689 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3690 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3692 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3694 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3695 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3696 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3697 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3699 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3701 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3702 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3703 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3704 you were last editing.
3706 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3708 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3709 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3710 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3713 =item Unrecognized character %s
3715 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3716 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3717 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3719 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3721 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3722 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3723 understood literally.
3725 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex;
3727 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3729 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3730 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3731 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
3732 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3733 escape was discovered.
3735 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3737 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3740 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3742 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3743 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3746 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3748 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3749 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3750 bad switch on your behalf.)
3752 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3754 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3755 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3756 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3758 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3760 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3762 =item Unsupported function %s
3764 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3765 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3767 =item Unsupported function fork
3769 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3771 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3772 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3773 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3775 =item Unsupported script encoding
3777 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
3778 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
3780 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3782 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3783 least that's what Configure thought.
3785 =item Unterminated attribute list
3787 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3788 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3789 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3790 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
3792 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3794 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3795 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3796 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3797 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3799 =item Unterminated compressed integer
3801 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3802 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3803 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3805 =item Unterminated <> operator
3807 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3808 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3809 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3810 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3812 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3814 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3815 still valid when C<untie> was called.
3817 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex;
3819 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3821 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
3822 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
3824 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
3828 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
3830 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3831 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3833 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex;
3835 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3837 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
3838 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
3840 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
3844 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
3846 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3847 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3849 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3851 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3852 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3853 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3854 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3855 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3856 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3861 when you meant to say
3863 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3865 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3866 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3871 when you should have said
3875 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3876 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3877 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3878 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3879 L<perlref> for more on this.
3881 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
3882 since they are often used in statements like
3884 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
3886 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
3889 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3891 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3893 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
3895 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
3899 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
3901 =item Useless use of %s with no values
3903 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
3904 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
3905 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
3906 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
3907 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
3908 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
3910 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3912 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3913 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3915 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3917 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3918 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3920 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
3922 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
3923 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
3925 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
3927 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
3928 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
3929 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
3932 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
3933 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
3935 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3937 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
3938 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
3939 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3941 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3943 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
3944 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
3945 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
3946 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
3949 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
3950 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
3951 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
3952 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
3955 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3956 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
3957 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
3958 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
3961 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
3962 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3963 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3965 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
3967 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
3968 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3969 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
3971 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
3973 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
3974 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
3975 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
3978 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3980 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3981 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3983 =item Use of $* is deprecated
3985 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
3986 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
3987 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
3988 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
3990 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3992 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
3993 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
3994 old way has bad side effects.
3996 =item Use of $# is deprecated
3998 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
3999 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4001 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4003 (W) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4004 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4005 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4007 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4008 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4009 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4010 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4012 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4014 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4015 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4016 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4017 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4018 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4019 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4021 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4023 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4024 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4025 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4027 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4028 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4029 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4030 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4031 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4032 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4035 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4037 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4038 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4039 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4040 be removed in a future version.
4042 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4044 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4045 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4046 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4047 removed in a future version.
4049 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4051 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4052 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4053 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4054 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4055 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4056 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4057 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4059 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4061 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4062 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4063 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4064 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4065 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4066 C<defined> operator.
4068 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4070 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4071 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4072 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4075 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4077 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4078 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4079 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4080 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4081 front of your variable.
4083 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4085 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4086 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4087 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4088 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4089 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4091 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
4093 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
4094 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
4095 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
4096 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
4098 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
4100 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
4101 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
4102 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
4103 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
4104 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
4105 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
4107 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
4108 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
4109 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
4110 between interferes with this feature.
4112 =item Variable syntax
4114 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4115 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4118 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4120 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4121 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
4123 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
4124 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4125 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4126 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4127 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4128 variable will no longer be shared.
4130 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
4131 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
4132 will I<never> share the given variable.
4134 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4135 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4136 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
4137 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4139 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex;
4141 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4143 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4144 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4145 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4147 =item Version number must be a constant number
4149 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4150 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4153 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4155 (W) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4156 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4157 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4158 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4159 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4160 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4163 =item Warning: something's wrong
4165 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4166 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4168 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4170 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4171 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4174 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4176 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4177 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4178 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4179 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4183 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4187 but in actual fact, you got
4191 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4193 =item Wide character in %s
4195 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4196 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print) but can be
4197 turned off by C<no warnings 'utf8';>. You are supposed to explicitly
4198 mark the filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4200 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4202 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4203 before now. Check your control flow.
4205 =item X outside of string
4207 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
4208 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4210 =item x outside of string
4212 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4213 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4215 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4217 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4220 =item Xsub called in sort
4222 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4225 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4227 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4228 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4229 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4232 =item You need to quote "%s"
4234 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4235 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4236 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4237 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4238 what you want, put an & in front.)