3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 Optional warnings are enabled by using the B<-w> switch. Warnings may
19 be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}> to a reference to a routine that
20 will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
21 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
24 Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s,
25 just as in a printf format. Note that some messages start with a %s!
26 The symbols C<"%(-?@> sort before the letters, while C<[> and C<\> sort after.
30 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
32 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense
33 to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local()
34 if you want to localize a package variable.
36 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
38 (W) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement,
39 effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
40 always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
41 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
44 =item "no" not allowed in expression
46 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
47 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
49 =item "use" not allowed in expression
51 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns
52 no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
54 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
56 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
59 =item % may only be used in unpack
61 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
62 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
63 way. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
65 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
67 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
68 by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
69 C<'>-delimited regular expression.
71 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
73 (W) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed
74 by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments
75 found inside the parentheses. See L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
77 =item %s argument is not a HASH element
79 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash element, such as
84 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
86 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
91 or a hash slice, such as
93 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
94 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
96 =item %s did not return a true value
98 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
99 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
100 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
101 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
103 =item %s found where operator expected
105 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
106 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an operator,
107 it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
108 delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
110 =item %s had compilation errors
112 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
114 =item %s has too many errors
116 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
117 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
119 =item %s matches null string many times
121 (W) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
122 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See L<perlre>.
124 =item %s never introduced
126 (S) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope
127 before it could possibly have been used.
131 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
133 =item %s: Command not found
135 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
136 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
139 =item %s: Expression syntax
141 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
142 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
145 =item %s: Undefined variable
147 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
148 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
153 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
154 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
157 =item (in cleanup) %s
159 (W) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
160 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by
161 the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
162 number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number
163 of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being
166 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag
167 could also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
169 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
171 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
172 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
173 the previous line just because you saw this message.
175 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
177 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
178 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
180 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
182 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
183 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
185 =item C<-p> destination: %s
187 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
188 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
189 redirected it with select().)
191 =item 500 Server error
195 =item ?+* follows nothing in regexp
197 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it
198 if you meant it literally. See L<perlre>.
200 =item @ outside of string
202 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
203 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
205 =item <> should be quotes
207 (F) You wrote C<require E<lt>fileE<gt>> when you should have written
210 =item accept() on closed fd
212 (W) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
213 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/accept>.
215 =item Allocation too large: %lx
217 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
219 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
221 (W) The pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///)
222 operators work on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
223 or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value -- the
224 length of an array, or the population info of a hash -- and then work on
225 that scalar value. This is probably not what you meant to do. See
226 L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for alternatives.
228 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
230 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
232 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
234 (W)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
235 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
236 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
238 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
240 (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword,
241 and you have used the name without qualification for calling one or the
242 other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
245 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
246 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
247 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
248 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
250 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
251 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring the subroutine
252 to be an object method (see L<attrs>).
254 =item Args must match #! line
256 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
257 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
258 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
259 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
261 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
263 (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
264 expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
265 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
267 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
269 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some spots. This
270 is now heavily deprecated.
272 =item assertion botched: %s
274 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
276 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
278 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
280 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
282 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
283 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
284 know which context to supply to the right side.
286 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
288 (P) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that will
289 be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be outside any
292 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
294 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
295 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
296 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
297 that can no longer be found in the table.
299 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
301 (W) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps()
302 routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the SV before
303 the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
304 routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free
307 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
309 (P) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
311 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
313 (W) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it
314 would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0 earlier,
315 and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This
316 could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or that
317 SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was mortalized
318 when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been corrupted.
320 =item Attempt to join self
322 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
323 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may
324 need to move the join() to some other thread.
326 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
328 (W) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
329 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
330 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
331 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
332 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
335 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
337 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
338 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
339 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
341 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
343 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or
344 shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
345 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
346 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
348 =item Bad filehandle: %s
350 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol
351 has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or
352 did it in another package.
354 =item Bad free() ignored
356 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been
357 malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
358 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
360 This message can be quite often seen with DB_File on systems with
361 "hard" dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of
362 C<Berkeley DB> which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving>
367 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
369 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
371 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
372 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
375 =item Bad name after %s::
377 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't
378 finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes,
387 $sym = "mypack::$var";
389 =item Bad symbol for array
391 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
392 wasn't a symbol table entry.
394 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
396 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something that
397 wasn't a symbol table entry.
399 =item Bad symbol for hash
401 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
402 wasn't a symbol table entry.
404 =item Badly placed ()'s
406 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
407 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
410 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
412 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
413 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" symbol.
414 Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
416 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
418 (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but
419 the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
420 Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
422 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
424 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN subroutine.
425 Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is exited.
427 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
429 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
430 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had
431 already occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}>
432 could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code
433 likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
435 =item bind() on closed fd
437 (W) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
438 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
440 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
442 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable.
444 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
446 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
447 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
448 so it was truncated to the string shown.
450 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
452 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over
453 %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
454 so it was truncated to the string shown.
456 =item Callback called exit
458 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via perl_call_sv()
459 exited by calling exit.
461 =item Can't "goto" outside a block
463 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
464 like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
465 occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which
466 is a no-no. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
468 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
470 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
471 foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
473 =item Can't "last" outside a block
475 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
476 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a
477 current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a
478 "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can usually double
479 the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies
480 will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/last>.
482 =item Can't "next" outside a block
484 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
485 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
486 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
487 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
488 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
490 =item Can't read CRTL environ
492 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
493 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
494 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
495 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
497 =item Can't read CRTL environ
499 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
500 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
501 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
502 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not searched.
504 =item Can't "redo" outside a block
506 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
507 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
508 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(). You can
509 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner
510 curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
512 =item Can't bless non-reference value
514 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
515 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
517 =item Can't break at that line
519 (S) A warning intended to only be printed while running within the debugger, indicating
520 the line number specified wasn't the location of a statement that could
523 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
525 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
526 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
527 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
529 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
531 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
532 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but
533 you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't
534 an object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
536 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
538 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
539 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
540 a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
541 Something like this will reproduce the error:
544 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
545 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
547 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
549 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
550 object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
551 Something like this will reproduce the error:
554 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
555 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
557 =item Can't chdir to %s
559 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
560 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
562 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
564 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
566 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
568 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
569 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
579 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
581 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
583 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
584 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
586 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
588 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
589 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
591 =item Can't coerce array into hash
593 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
594 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
595 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
597 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
599 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted quotas
600 or other plumbing problems.
602 =item Can't declare %s in my
604 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as lexical variables.
605 They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
607 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
609 (S) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated reason.
611 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
613 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try reading
614 from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say C<-i.bak>, or some
617 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s E<gt> 14 characters
619 (S) There isn't enough room in the filename to make a backup name for the file.
621 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
623 (S) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as a file in
624 /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
626 =item Can't do setegid!
628 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
631 =item Can't do seteuid!
633 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
635 =item Can't do setuid
637 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to
638 do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the
639 form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides
640 under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines.
641 If the file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask
642 your sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
644 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
646 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid()
647 without flags is emulated.
649 =item Can't do {n,m} with n E<gt> m
651 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want
652 your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. See L<perlre>.
654 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
656 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this point.
657 For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #! line.
659 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
661 (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named
662 program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the permissions
663 were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in C<$ENV{PATH}>, the
664 executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or the
665 #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
666 similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.)
670 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because that's
671 what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may need to
672 mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
674 =item Can't execute %s
676 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute found
677 in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
679 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
681 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
682 in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The script
683 exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
685 =item Can't find %s on PATH
687 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be found
690 =item Can't find label %s
692 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's possible
693 for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
695 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
697 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means that
698 the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count nesting
699 levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
701 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
703 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
704 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
705 programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
709 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a pipeline.
711 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
713 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference between
714 access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS,
715 access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so
716 that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl
717 assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes
718 it, instead of the filespec, to the access checking routine. It will try to
719 retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer,
720 but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat()
721 routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
722 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up and
723 returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking routine
724 knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
725 see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal
726 code takes stat buffers lightly.)
728 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
730 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl
731 can't retrieve its name for later use.
733 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
735 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
736 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
738 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
740 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine
741 call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general
742 you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See
745 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
747 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string".
748 (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
750 =item Can't localize through a reference
752 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
753 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
754 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be
755 sure that $ref will still be a reference.
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-E<gt>{'key'}>, where $ar is
767 a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but
768 you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
769 element directly -- C<local $ar-E<gt>[$ar-E<gt>[0]{'key'}]>.
771 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
773 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload,
774 but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes are a misprint
775 in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit> the file, say, by
776 doing C<make install>.
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 need
783 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the extra
784 library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name to @INC. Or
785 maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See L<perlfunc/require>
788 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
790 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
791 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
792 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
794 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
796 (W) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that doesn't seem
799 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
801 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably VMS.
803 =item Can't modify %s in %s
805 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try to
806 change it, such as with an auto-increment.
808 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
810 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
813 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
815 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
818 =item Can't open %s: %s
820 (S) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<E<lt>E<gt>>
821 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
822 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
823 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named
826 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
828 (W) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported. You can
829 try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as
830 IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using "E<gt>",
831 and then read it in under a different file handle.
833 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
835 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
836 couldn't open the file specified after '2E<gt>' or '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the
837 command line for writing.
839 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
841 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
842 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<lt>' on the command line for reading.
844 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
846 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
847 couldn't open the file specified after 'E<gt>' or 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command
850 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
852 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
853 couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined for stdout.
855 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
857 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
859 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
861 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
862 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when it
863 was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
864 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
866 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
868 (S) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason, probably because
869 you don't have write permission to the directory.
871 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
873 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried to
874 reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
876 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
878 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
881 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
883 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
884 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
886 =item Can't stat script "%s"
888 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have
889 it open already. Bizarre.
891 =item Can't swap uid and euid
893 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator
896 =item Can't take log of %g
898 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
899 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
900 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for
901 the negative numbers.
903 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
905 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
906 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
907 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
909 =item Can't undef active subroutine
911 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
912 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
913 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
917 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
918 as the main Perl stack.
920 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
922 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
923 it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
924 so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
925 message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
927 =item Can't upgrade to undef
929 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
930 of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
931 code calling sv_upgrade.
933 =item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
935 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
936 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
937 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
939 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
941 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
942 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the E<lt>=E<gt> or cmp operator,
943 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
944 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
947 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
949 (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
950 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
951 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
953 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
955 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a foreach.
957 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
959 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
960 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
961 test the type of the reference, if need be.
963 =item Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression
965 (W) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates
966 a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference
967 to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern.
968 Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints
969 out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
971 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while \"strict refs\" in use
973 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
974 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
976 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
978 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
979 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
981 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
983 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
984 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
986 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
988 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is
989 not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely
990 the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have
991 variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
994 =item Can't use subscript on %s
996 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
997 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
998 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1000 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1002 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1003 references can be weakened.
1005 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1007 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with
1008 an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1009 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1011 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
1013 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but
1014 there is no builtin with the name C<word>.
1016 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1018 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1019 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1020 package. If method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1022 =item Character class [:%s:] unknown
1024 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown.
1026 =item Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
1028 (W) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
1029 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct. For
1030 example: /[[:alpha:]]/
1032 =item Character class syntax [ .] is reserved for future extensions
1034 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
1035 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
1036 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1037 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1038 backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
1040 =item Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
1042 (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
1043 beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions.
1044 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
1045 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
1046 backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
1048 =item chmod: mode argument is missing initial 0
1050 (W) A novice will sometimes say
1052 chmod 777, $filename
1054 not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number, equivalent
1055 to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in Perl, as in C.
1057 =item Close on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
1059 (W) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1061 =item Compilation failed in require
1063 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1064 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered
1065 were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1067 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1069 (W) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex situations
1070 where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited to 32766,
1071 or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1072 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1073 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1074 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather
1075 than in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular
1076 expression so that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlbook>
1077 for information on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1079 =item connect() on closed fd
1081 (W) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1082 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/connect>.
1084 =item Constant is not %s reference
1086 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1087 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The
1088 message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually
1089 indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1090 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1092 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1094 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1095 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1098 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1100 (S) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
1101 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1104 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1106 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1108 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1110 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1112 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1114 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1115 expression compiler gave it.
1117 =item corrupted regexp program
1119 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without
1120 a valid magic number.
1122 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1124 (W) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly) 100
1125 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an infinite
1126 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in which
1127 case it indicates something else.
1129 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1131 (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
1132 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the array is empty,
1133 just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1135 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1137 (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it checks for an
1138 undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash is empty,
1139 just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1141 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1143 (F) In a here document construct like C<E<lt>E<lt>FOO>, the label
1144 C<FOO> is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously
1145 twisted to write code that triggers this error.
1147 =item Did you mean &%s instead?
1149 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some such.
1151 =item Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?
1153 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}.
1154 On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away.
1158 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1159 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1161 =item Do you need to predeclare %s?
1163 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1164 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1165 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1166 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1167 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're
1168 referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have
1169 to define the subroutine or package before the current location. You
1170 can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward"
1173 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1175 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1177 =item do_study: out of memory
1179 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1181 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1183 (S) An internal routine called free() on something that had already
1186 =item elseif should be elsif
1188 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1189 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1190 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1191 unlikely to be what you want.
1193 =item END failed--cleanup aborted
1195 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing an END subroutine.
1196 The interpreter is immediately exited.
1198 =item entering effective %s failed
1200 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1201 effective uids or gids failed.
1203 =item Error converting file specification %s
1205 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1206 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1207 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've
1208 passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
1209 case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1211 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1213 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression
1214 that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which is unsafe.
1215 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1217 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1219 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion,
1220 but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'> pragma is
1221 in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1223 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1225 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the C<(?{ ... })>
1226 zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains
1227 interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed.
1228 If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly building the pattern
1229 from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
1230 See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1232 =item Excessively long <> operator
1234 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1235 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1236 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1237 variable and glob that.
1239 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1241 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1243 =item Exiting eval via %s
1245 (W) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as
1246 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1248 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1250 (W) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or
1251 subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control
1252 statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1254 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1256 (W) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as
1257 a goto, or a loop control statement.
1259 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1261 (W) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as
1262 a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1264 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1266 (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1267 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1268 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target
1269 package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1271 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1273 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS system
1274 service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. The
1275 filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you which section of
1276 the Perl source code is distressed.
1278 =item fcntl is not implemented
1280 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1281 PDP-11 or something?
1283 =item Filehandle %s never opened
1285 (W) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized.
1286 You need to do an open() or a socket() call, or call a constructor from
1287 the FileHandle package.
1289 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1291 (W) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
1292 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1293 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1294 you intended only to write the file, use "E<gt>" or "E<gt>E<gt>". See
1297 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1299 (W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
1300 intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
1301 "+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
1302 you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
1305 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1307 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1308 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1309 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1312 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1314 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1315 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
1316 that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or
1319 =item Format %s redefined
1321 (W) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1325 eval "format NAME =...";
1328 =item Format not terminated
1330 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1331 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1333 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1343 (or something like that).
1345 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1347 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1349 =item gethostent not implemented
1351 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1352 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1355 =item get{sock,peer}name() on closed fd
1357 (W) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket.
1358 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1360 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1362 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1363 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1365 =item Glob not terminated
1367 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1368 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
1369 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
1370 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1372 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1374 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1375 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), or explicitly qualified to
1376 say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1378 =item goto must have label
1380 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1381 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1383 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1385 (S) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have
1386 existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be created on
1387 an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1389 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1391 (D) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some spots. This
1392 is now heavily deprecated.
1394 =item Identifier too long
1396 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1397 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1398 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
1399 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1401 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1403 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal
1404 environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=> delimiter
1405 used to spearate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1407 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1409 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name
1410 or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1411 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the
1414 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1416 (F) A carriage return character was found in the input. This is an
1417 error, and not a warning, because carriage return characters can break
1418 multi-line strings, including here documents (e.g., C<print E<lt>E<lt>EOF;>).
1420 Under Unix, this error is usually caused by executing Perl code --
1421 either the main program, a module, or an eval'd string -- that was
1422 transferred over a network connection from a non-Unix system without
1423 properly converting the text file format.
1425 Under systems that use something other than '\n' to delimit lines of
1426 text, this error can also be caused by reading Perl code from a file
1427 handle that is in binary mode (as set by the C<binmode> operator).
1429 In either case, the Perl code in question will probably need to be
1430 converted with something like C<s/\x0D\x0A?/\n/g> before it can be
1433 =item Illegal division by zero
1435 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in your
1436 logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input.
1438 =item Illegal modulus zero
1440 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most numbers
1441 don't take to this kindly.
1443 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1445 (F) You used a digit other than 0 and 1 in a binary number.
1447 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1449 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1451 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1453 (W) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1454 Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the offending digit.
1456 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1458 (W) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number. Interpretation
1459 of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1461 =item Illegal hex digit %s ignored
1463 (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F in a
1464 hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped
1465 before the illegal character.
1467 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1469 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1470 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
1472 =item In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
1474 (F) It used to be that Perl would try to guess whether you wanted an
1475 array interpolated or a literal @. It did this when the string was first
1476 used at runtime. Now strings are parsed at compile time, and ambiguous
1477 instances of @ must be disambiguated, either by prepending a backslash to
1478 indicate a literal, or by declaring (or using) the array within the
1479 program before the string (lexically). (Someday it will simply assume
1480 that an unbackslashed @ interpolates an array.)
1482 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1484 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1485 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or setgid,
1486 or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The tainting mechanism
1487 labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user,
1488 who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any such data is
1489 used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See L<perlsec>
1490 for more information.
1492 =item Insecure directory in %s
1494 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid
1495 script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by the world.
1498 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1500 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1501 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1502 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1503 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1504 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1506 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1508 (S) The literal hex, octal or binary number you have specified is
1509 too big for your architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest
1510 literal hex, octal or binary number representable without overflow
1511 is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or 0b11111111111111111111111111111111
1512 respectively. Note that Perl transparently promotes decimal literals
1513 to a floating point representation internally--subject to loss of
1514 precision errors in subsequent operations--so this limit usually
1515 doesn't apply to decimal literals.
1517 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1519 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number
1520 of times you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine
1521 whether the current call to C<exec> should affect the current
1522 script or a subprocess (see L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count
1523 has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating
1524 this C<exec> as a request to terminate the Perl script
1525 and execute the specified command.
1527 =item internal disaster in regexp
1529 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1531 =item glob failed (%s)
1533 (W) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for C<glob>
1534 and C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
1535 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a nonzero
1536 status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted in a
1537 coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is broken. If so,
1538 you should change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: If you
1539 have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
1540 C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all empty (except that
1541 C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will think csh is missing.
1542 In either case, after editing config.sh, run C<./Configure -S> and
1545 =item internal urp in regexp at /%s/
1547 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser.
1549 =item invalid [] range in regexp
1551 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1552 greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1554 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1556 (W) Perl does not understand the given format conversion.
1557 See L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1559 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1561 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1562 (W) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be silently
1565 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1567 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1568 (W) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be silently
1571 =item ioctl is not implemented
1573 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1574 strange for a machine that supports C.
1576 =item junk on end of regexp
1578 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1580 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1582 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
1583 loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
1584 See L<perlfunc/last>.
1586 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1588 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1589 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1592 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1594 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1595 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1598 =item leaving effective %s failed
1600 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1601 effective uids or gids failed.
1603 =item listen() on closed fd
1605 (W) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check
1606 the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/listen>.
1608 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1610 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1611 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1613 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1615 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1616 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1617 ended earlier on the current line.
1619 =item Misplaced _ in number
1621 (W) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
1623 =item Missing $ on loop variable
1625 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables are always
1626 mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from
1627 one line to the next.
1629 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1631 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1632 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1634 =item Missing command in piped open
1636 (W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
1637 construction, but the command was missing or blank.
1639 =item Missing operator before %s?
1641 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1642 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1644 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
1646 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
1647 closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place
1648 you were last editing.
1650 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1652 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
1653 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
1654 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1656 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1659 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1661 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript %d
1663 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1664 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1667 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, subscript "%s"
1669 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't
1670 be created for some peculiar reason.
1672 =item Module name must be constant
1674 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1676 =item msg%s not implemented
1678 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1680 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1682 (W) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written
1683 like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
1685 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1687 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
1688 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
1689 it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<use vars> pragma is
1690 provided for just this purpose.
1692 =item Negative length
1694 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length
1695 that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
1697 =item nested *?+ in regexp
1699 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
1700 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
1702 Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C<??> appear
1703 to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
1707 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1708 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
1710 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
1712 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid
1713 script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be
1714 another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
1717 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
1719 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
1721 =item No comma allowed after %s
1723 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
1724 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
1725 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
1727 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
1728 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
1729 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
1730 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
1731 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
1732 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
1733 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
1734 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
1735 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
1736 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
1737 this error was triggered?
1739 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
1741 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1742 and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you
1743 want to pipe the output from this command.
1745 =item No DB::DB routine defined
1747 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1748 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1749 didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
1750 statement. Which is odd, because the file should have been required
1751 automatically, and should have blown up the require if it didn't parse
1754 =item No dbm on this machine
1756 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
1757 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
1759 =item No DBsub routine
1761 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
1762 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
1763 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
1764 ordinary subroutine call.
1766 =item No error file after 2E<gt> or 2E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1768 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1769 and found a '2E<gt>' or a '2E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find
1770 the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
1772 =item No input file after E<lt> on command line
1774 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1775 and found a 'E<lt>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file
1776 from which to read data for stdin.
1778 =item No output file after E<gt> on command line
1780 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1781 and found a lone 'E<gt>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know
1782 where you wanted to redirect stdout.
1784 =item No output file after E<gt> or E<gt>E<gt> on command line
1786 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection,
1787 and found a 'E<gt>' or a 'E<gt>E<gt>' on the command line, but can't find the
1788 name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
1790 =item No Perl script found in input
1792 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
1793 with #! and containing the word "perl".
1795 =item No setregid available
1797 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
1800 =item No setreuid available
1802 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
1805 =item No space allowed after B<-I>
1807 (F) The argument to B<-I> must follow the B<-I> immediately with no
1810 =item No such array field
1812 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
1813 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
1814 array indices for that to work.
1816 =item No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
1818 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
1819 does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in
1820 the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash
1821 is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
1823 =item No such pipe open
1825 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
1826 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as
1827 an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
1829 =item No such signal: SIG%s
1831 (W) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized.
1832 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
1834 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1836 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
1837 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1838 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1839 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1842 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
1844 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Per was unable to find the local
1845 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
1846 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
1847 to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to
1850 =item Not a CODE reference
1852 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1853 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1854 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1855 See also L<perlref>.
1857 =item Not a format reference
1859 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
1860 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
1862 =item Not a GLOB reference
1864 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is,
1865 a symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
1866 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
1867 what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1869 =item Not a HASH reference
1871 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
1872 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1873 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1875 =item Not a perl script
1877 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
1878 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
1881 =item Not a SCALAR reference
1883 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
1884 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1885 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1887 =item Not a subroutine reference
1889 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
1890 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
1891 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was.
1892 See also L<perlref>.
1894 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
1896 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1897 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1899 =item Not an ARRAY reference
1901 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
1902 found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
1903 function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
1905 =item Not enough arguments for %s
1907 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
1909 =item Not enough format arguments
1911 (W) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied.
1914 =item Null filename used
1916 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many machines
1917 that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
1919 =item Null picture in formline
1921 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
1922 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
1923 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
1925 =item NULL OP IN RUN
1927 (P) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer.
1931 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
1933 =item NULL regexp argument
1935 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
1937 =item NULL regexp parameter
1939 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
1941 =item Number too long
1943 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about
1944 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of
1945 Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime,
1946 try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
1948 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
1950 (S) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which
1951 is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
1953 =item Offset outside string
1955 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
1956 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
1957 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
1958 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
1962 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1966 (S) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
1968 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
1970 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
1971 no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
1972 terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
1973 operation, unless C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be
1974 true. See L<overload>.
1976 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
1978 (S) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was
1979 expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant
1980 to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
1981 For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as
1982 if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
1984 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
1986 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue parsing,
1987 but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or otherwise.
1989 =item Out of memory during request for %s
1991 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
1992 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
1994 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
1995 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
1996 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
1997 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
1998 error is trappable I<once>.
2000 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2002 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2003 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2004 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
2005 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2007 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2009 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2010 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., C<$arr[time]>
2011 instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2015 (W) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page.
2018 =item panic: ck_grep
2020 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2022 =item panic: ck_split
2024 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2026 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2028 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there
2029 are in the savestack.
2031 =item panic: del_backref
2033 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2038 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2039 it wasn't an eval context.
2041 =item panic: do_match
2043 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2045 =item panic: do_split
2047 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2049 =item panic: do_subst
2051 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2053 =item panic: do_trans
2055 (P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational data.
2059 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2063 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2064 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2066 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2068 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2070 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2072 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2074 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2076 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2080 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2081 it wasn't a block context.
2083 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2085 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the scope.
2087 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2089 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2090 invalid enum on the top of it.
2094 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2096 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2098 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2099 references to an object.
2101 =item panic: mapstart
2103 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2105 =item panic: null array
2107 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2109 =item panic: pad_alloc
2111 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2112 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2114 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2116 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2117 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2119 =item panic: pad_free po
2121 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2123 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2125 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2126 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2128 =item panic: pad_sv po
2130 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2132 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2134 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2135 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2137 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2139 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2141 =item panic: pp_iter
2143 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2145 =item panic: realloc
2147 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2149 =item panic: restartop
2151 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2152 didn't supply the destination.
2156 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2157 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2159 =item panic: scan_num
2161 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2163 =item panic: sv_insert
2165 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2168 =item panic: top_env
2170 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2174 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2176 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2178 (W) You said something like
2184 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2186 Remember that "my" and "local" bind closer than comma.
2188 =item Perl %3.3f required--this is only version %s, stopped
2190 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent
2191 than the currently running version. How long has it been since you upgraded,
2192 anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2194 =item Permission denied
2196 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2198 =item pid %x not a child
2200 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which
2201 isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS'
2202 perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2204 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2206 (F) Your C compiler uses POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2207 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2209 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2211 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2212 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
2213 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2214 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2216 You probably wrote something like this:
2223 when you should have written this:
2230 If you really want comments, build your list the
2231 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2235 'b', # another comment
2238 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2240 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
2241 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
2242 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
2245 You probably wrote something like this:
2249 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2250 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2254 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2256 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2257 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2258 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2259 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2261 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2263 (S) The old irregular construct
2267 is now misinterpreted as
2271 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
2272 and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
2273 put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
2276 =item print on closed filehandle %s
2278 (W) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now.
2279 Check your logic flow.
2281 =item printf on closed filehandle %s
2283 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2284 Check your logic flow.
2286 =item Probable precedence problem on %s
2288 (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a conditional,
2289 which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part of the
2290 last argument of the previous construct, for example:
2294 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2296 (S) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared
2297 or defined with a different function prototype.
2299 =item Range iterator outside integer range
2301 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2302 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
2303 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
2304 increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
2306 =item Read on closed filehandle %s
2308 (W) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now.
2309 Check your logic flow.
2311 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
2313 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2315 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2317 (F) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce the
2318 desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
2319 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2321 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
2323 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2324 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2326 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' in package '%s'
2328 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a
2329 method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2331 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2333 (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with
2334 an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
2335 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
2336 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
2338 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2339 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2340 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2341 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2343 =item Reference is already weak
2345 (W) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
2346 Doing so has no effect.
2348 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2350 (W) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
2351 reference count of other than 1.
2353 =item regexp *+ operand could be empty
2355 (F) The part of the regexp subject to either the * or + quantifier
2356 could match an empty string.
2358 =item regexp memory corruption
2360 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2361 expression compiler gave it.
2363 =item regexp out of space
2365 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
2367 =item Reversed %s= operator
2369 (W) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always
2370 comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
2372 =item Runaway format
2374 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2375 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2376 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2377 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2378 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2380 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2382 (W) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2383 an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2384 The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2385 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves
2386 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2387 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2389 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
2390 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2391 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2394 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2396 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
2397 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
2398 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
2399 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
2400 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
2401 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
2403 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
2404 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
2405 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2408 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2410 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2411 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
2413 =item Search pattern not terminated
2415 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2416 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2417 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
2419 =item %sseek() on unopened file
2421 (W) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a filehandle that
2422 was either never opened or has since been closed.
2424 =item select not implemented
2426 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2428 =item sem%s not implemented
2430 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
2432 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2434 (S) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a scalar
2435 that had previously been marked as free.
2437 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
2439 (W) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon,
2440 or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
2442 =item Send on closed socket
2444 (W) The filehandle you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now.
2445 Check your logic flow.
2447 =item Sequence (? incomplete
2449 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?.
2452 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated
2454 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2455 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2457 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented
2459 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
2460 but has not yet been written. See L<perlre>.
2462 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized
2464 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
2469 Also known as "500 Server error".
2471 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
2473 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user
2474 CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you
2475 tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH)
2476 from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI
2477 server can't find it, basically, more or less. Please see the following
2478 for more information:
2480 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
2481 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
2482 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
2483 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
2484 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
2486 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
2488 =item setegid() not implemented
2490 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support
2491 the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2494 =item seteuid() not implemented
2496 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<gt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2497 the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2500 =item setrgid() not implemented
2502 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support
2503 the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2506 =item setruid() not implemented
2508 (F) You tried to assign to C<$E<lt>>, and your operating system doesn't support
2509 the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't
2512 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
2514 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the world,
2515 because the world might have written on it already.
2517 =item shm%s not implemented
2519 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
2521 =item shutdown() on closed fd
2523 (W) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
2525 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
2527 (W) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist. Perhaps you
2528 put it into the wrong package?
2530 =item sort is now a reserved word
2532 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
2533 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
2535 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
2537 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
2538 it by not using C<E<lt>=E<gt>> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
2539 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2541 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
2543 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
2544 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2548 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't iterate
2549 more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
2550 See L<perlfunc/split>.
2552 =item Stat on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2554 (W) You tried to use the stat() function (or an equivalent file test)
2555 on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
2557 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
2559 (W) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a die().
2560 This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns unless
2561 there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system() instead,
2562 which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a block
2565 =item Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
2567 (W) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where it
2568 makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion.
2569 Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
2570 the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
2571 repetitions of "xyz" is C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
2573 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
2575 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs.
2576 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
2579 =item Subroutine %s redefined
2581 (W) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
2585 eval "sub name { ... }";
2588 =item Substitution loop
2590 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
2591 substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
2592 input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
2593 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
2595 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
2597 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2598 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2599 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2601 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
2603 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
2604 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
2605 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
2607 =item substr outside of string
2609 (S),(W) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a
2610 string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
2611 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is
2612 mandatory if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side
2613 of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
2615 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
2617 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a
2618 version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
2620 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
2622 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the
2623 real and effective uids or gids.
2627 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
2629 A keyword is misspelled.
2630 A semicolon is missing.
2632 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
2633 An opening or closing brace is missing.
2634 A closing quote is missing.
2636 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
2637 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
2638 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
2639 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
2640 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
2641 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
2642 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
2643 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
2644 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
2646 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
2648 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
2649 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
2652 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
2654 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
2655 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
2656 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
2657 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
2659 =item Syswrite on closed filehandle
2661 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
2662 Check your logic flow.
2664 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
2666 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply
2667 nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
2669 =item tell() on unopened file
2671 (W) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that was either
2672 never opened or has since been closed.
2674 =item Test on unopened file E<lt>%sE<gt>
2676 (W) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't
2677 open. Check your logic. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2679 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
2681 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted as
2682 a compiler directive. You may say only one of
2691 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base
2692 out from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
2694 =item The %s function is unimplemented
2696 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
2697 to the probings of Configure.
2699 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
2701 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
2702 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
2703 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
2704 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
2707 =item The stat preceding C<-l _> wasn't an lstat
2709 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic linkhood
2710 if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went past
2711 the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename instead.
2713 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2715 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2717 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2718 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2719 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2720 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2721 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2722 %ENV which produced the warning.
2724 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL eviron elements (%s)
2726 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
2728 (W) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an element
2729 of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't
2730 built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need to
2731 rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see
2732 L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to
2733 %ENV which produced the warning.
2735 =item times not implemented
2737 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect
2738 you're not running on Unix.
2740 =item Too few args to syscall
2742 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
2743 system call to call, silly dilly.
2745 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
2747 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2748 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
2749 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
2750 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
2753 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
2754 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
2755 by editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's
2756 first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
2758 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
2759 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
2761 =item Too late for "-%s" option
2763 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
2764 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
2765 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
2771 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
2772 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
2775 =item Too many args to syscall
2777 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
2779 =item Too many arguments for %s
2781 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
2783 =item trailing \ in regexp
2785 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash
2788 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
2790 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2791 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
2792 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
2794 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
2796 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
2799 =item truncate not implemented
2801 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
2802 Configure knows about.
2804 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
2806 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
2807 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
2808 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
2809 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
2811 =item umask: argument is missing initial 0
2813 (W) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
2814 literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
2816 =item umask not implemented
2818 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
2819 to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
2821 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
2823 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
2825 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
2827 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many execution
2828 contexts were entered and left.
2830 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
2832 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many
2833 values were temporarily localized.
2835 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
2837 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks
2838 were entered and left.
2840 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
2842 (W) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal
2843 scalars were allocated and freed.
2845 =item Undefined format "%s" called
2847 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2848 another package? See L<perlform>.
2850 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
2852 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
2853 it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2855 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
2857 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2858 has since been undefined.
2860 =item Undefined subroutine called
2862 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
2863 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
2865 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
2867 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to
2868 have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2870 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
2872 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
2873 another package? See L<perlform>.
2875 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
2877 (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>.
2878 This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C<undef *foo>.
2880 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
2882 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
2883 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
2885 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
2887 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte order.
2889 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2891 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2892 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2893 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2894 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2896 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
2898 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
2899 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
2900 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
2901 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
2903 =item unmatched () in regexp
2905 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
2906 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
2907 the matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
2909 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
2911 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
2912 opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
2913 As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the
2914 place you were last editing.
2916 =item unmatched [] in regexp
2918 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
2919 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first.
2922 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2924 (W) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word.
2925 It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert
2926 an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
2928 =item Unrecognized character %s
2930 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
2931 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
2932 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
2934 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
2936 (W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
2939 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
2941 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized.
2942 Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
2944 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
2946 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that.
2947 (If you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
2948 supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
2950 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
2952 (W) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that operation
2953 failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY
2954 because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
2956 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
2958 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
2960 =item Unsupported function fork
2962 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
2964 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
2965 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
2966 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
2968 =item Unsupported function %s
2970 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
2971 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
2973 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
2975 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
2976 least that's what Configure thought.
2978 =item Unterminated E<lt>E<gt> operator
2980 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2981 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not
2982 finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in
2983 the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2985 =item Use of $# is deprecated
2987 (D) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly defined B<awk> feature.
2988 Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
2990 =item Use of $* is deprecated
2992 (D) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern matching, both for
2993 you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen to call. You should
2994 use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do that without the dangerous
2995 action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
2997 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
2999 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3000 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3002 =item Use of bare E<lt>E<lt> to mean E<lt>E<lt>"" is deprecated
3004 (D) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form if you
3005 wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
3007 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3009 (D) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber a
3010 subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results of
3011 a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
3013 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3015 (D) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines are looked
3016 up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the subroutines to
3017 be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not
3018 as methods (e.g. C<Foo-E<gt>bar()> or C<$obj-E<gt>bar()>).
3020 This bug will be rectified in Perl 5.005, which will use method lookup
3021 only for methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base
3022 of existing code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an
3023 interim step, Perl 5.004 issues an optional warning when non-methods
3024 use inherited C<AUTOLOAD>s.
3026 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
3027 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used to
3028 depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class named
3029 C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during startup.
3031 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);> you
3032 should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
3033 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
3035 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3037 (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl
3038 may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting
3039 the word in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
3040 different name altogether. The warning can be suppressed for subroutine
3041 names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using a package qualifier,
3042 e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
3044 =item Use of %s is deprecated
3046 (D) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use, generally
3047 because there's a better way to do it, and also because the old way has
3050 =item Use of uninitialized value
3052 (W) An undefined value was used as if it were already defined. It was
3053 interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this
3054 warning assign a defined value to your variables.
3056 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3058 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3060 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3062 (W) You did something without a side effect in a context that does nothing
3063 with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a value
3064 from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
3065 this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl to parse
3066 your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd get this
3067 if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and said
3071 when you meant to say
3073 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3075 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3076 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3081 when you should have said
3085 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3086 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3087 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3088 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3089 L<perlref> for more on this.
3091 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3093 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
3094 valid when C<untie> was called.
3096 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
3098 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), C<each()>,
3099 or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
3100 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which is
3101 probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in conditional
3102 expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
3104 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3106 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3107 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3108 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3111 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3113 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV
3114 element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer
3115 than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024
3118 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
3120 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
3121 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3122 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported
3123 by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character
3124 on the front of your variable.
3126 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3128 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
3129 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
3130 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
3131 the outermost subroutine. For example:
3133 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3135 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
3136 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
3137 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3138 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
3139 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
3140 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
3143 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
3144 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
3145 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
3146 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
3148 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3150 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
3151 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
3153 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
3154 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
3155 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
3156 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
3157 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
3158 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
3160 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3161 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3162 will I<never> share the given variable.
3164 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3165 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
3166 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
3167 they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
3170 =item Variable syntax
3172 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3173 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3176 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3178 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3180 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3181 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3184 are supported and installed on your system.
3185 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3187 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3188 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3189 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your system
3190 administrator have set up the so-called variable system but Perl could
3191 not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately: there
3192 is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
3193 script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you
3194 will get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to really
3195 fix the problem can be found in L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3197 =item Warning: something's wrong
3199 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3200 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3202 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
3204 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the
3205 close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space.
3207 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
3209 (S) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a
3210 binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or
3211 unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function
3212 has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
3216 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3220 but in actual fact, you got
3224 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
3226 =item Write on closed filehandle %s
3228 (W) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now.
3229 Check your logic flow.
3231 =item X outside of string
3233 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3234 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3236 =item x outside of string
3238 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3239 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3241 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3243 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3245 =item Xsub called in sort
3247 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet supported.
3249 =item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3251 (F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it
3252 already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
3253 Use a filename instead.
3255 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3257 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
3258 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
3259 about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in
3260 the eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
3262 =item You need to quote "%s"
3264 (W) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name. Unfortunately, you
3265 already have a subroutine of that name declared, which means that Perl 5
3266 will try to call the subroutine when the assignment is executed, which is
3267 probably not what you want. (If it IS what you want, put an & in front.)
3269 =item [gs]etsockopt() on closed fd
3271 (W) You tried to get or set a socket option on a closed socket.
3272 Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
3273 See L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
3275 =item \1 better written as $1
3277 (W) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. The use
3278 of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
3279 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
3280 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
3281 if there are more than 9 backreferences.
3283 =item '|' and 'E<lt>' may not both be specified on command line
3285 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3286 found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using
3287 'E<lt>'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
3289 =item '|' and 'E<gt>' may not both be specified on command line
3291 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and
3292 thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another
3293 command. You need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you
3294 from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two
3297 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
3304 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
3306 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
3307 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
3309 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3311 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3319 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix
3320 of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error
3321 may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3322 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in F<README.os2>.
3324 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3326 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3327 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in F<README.os2>.
3329 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3331 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3332 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3333 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3334 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"