3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
141 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
143 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
149 or a hash or array slice, such as:
151 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
152 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
154 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
156 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
157 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
160 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
162 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
163 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
164 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
166 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
168 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
169 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
171 =item assertion botched: %s
173 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
175 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
177 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
179 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
181 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
182 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
183 know which context to supply to the right side.
185 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
187 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
188 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
190 =item Attempt to clear a restricted hash
192 (F) It is currently not allowed to clear a restricted hash, even if the
193 new hash would contain the same keys as before. This may change in
196 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
198 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
199 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
201 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
203 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
204 which is not in its key set.
206 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
208 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
209 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
210 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
216 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
218 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
219 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
222 bless $self, "$proto";
224 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
226 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
227 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
228 outside any of those arenas.
230 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
232 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
233 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
234 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
235 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
237 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
239 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
240 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
241 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
242 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
245 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
247 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
249 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
251 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
252 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
253 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
254 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
255 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
256 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
259 =item Attempt to join self
261 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
262 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
263 to move the join() to some other thread.
265 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
267 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
268 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
269 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
270 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
271 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
274 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
276 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
277 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
278 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
280 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
282 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
283 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
284 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
285 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
287 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
289 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
290 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
291 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
293 =item Bad filehandle: %s
295 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
296 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
297 open(), or did it in another package.
299 =item Bad free() ignored
301 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
302 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
303 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
305 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
306 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
307 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
311 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
313 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
315 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
316 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
319 =item Badly placed ()'s
321 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
322 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
325 =item Bad name after %s::
327 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
328 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
337 $sym = "mypack::$var";
339 =item Bad realloc() ignored
341 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
342 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
343 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
345 =item Bad symbol for array
347 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
348 wasn't a symbol table entry.
350 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
352 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
353 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
355 =item Bad symbol for hash
357 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
358 wasn't a symbol table entry.
360 =item Bareword found in conditional
362 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
363 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
364 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
368 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
371 use constant TYPO => 1;
372 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
374 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
376 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
378 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
379 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
380 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
382 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
384 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
385 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
386 you need to predeclare a package?
388 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
390 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
391 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
394 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
396 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
397 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
398 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
399 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
400 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
402 =item \1 better written as $1
404 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
405 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
406 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
407 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
408 there are more than 9 backreferences.
410 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
412 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
413 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
414 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
416 =item bind() on closed socket %s
418 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
419 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
421 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
423 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
424 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
426 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
428 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
430 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
432 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
435 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
437 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
438 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
440 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
442 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
443 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
444 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
446 =item Callback called exit
448 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
449 exited by calling exit.
451 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
453 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
454 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
455 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
456 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
457 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
458 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
459 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
460 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
462 =item / cannot take a count
464 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
465 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
468 =item Can't bless non-reference value
470 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
471 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
473 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
475 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
476 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
477 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
479 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
481 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
482 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
483 like this will reproduce the error:
486 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
487 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
489 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
491 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
492 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
493 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
494 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
496 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
498 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
499 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
500 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
501 Something like this will reproduce the error:
504 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
505 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
507 =item Can't chdir to %s
509 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
510 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
512 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
514 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
517 =item Can't coerce array into hash
519 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
520 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
521 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
523 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
525 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
526 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
536 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
538 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
540 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
541 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
543 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
545 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
546 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
548 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
550 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
551 quotas or other plumbing problems.
553 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
555 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
556 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
557 extended for other types of variables in future.
559 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
561 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
562 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
564 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
566 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
567 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
569 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
571 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
574 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
576 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
577 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
578 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
580 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
582 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
583 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
584 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
586 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
588 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
589 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
590 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
592 =item Can't do setegid!
594 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
597 =item Can't do seteuid!
599 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
601 =item Can't do setuid
603 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
604 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
605 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
606 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
607 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
608 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
610 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
612 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
613 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
615 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
617 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
618 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
621 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
623 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
624 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
625 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
626 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
627 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
628 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
633 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
634 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
635 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
637 =item Can't execute %s
639 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
640 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
642 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
644 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
645 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
647 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
649 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
650 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
651 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
652 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
654 =item Can't find label %s
656 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
657 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
659 =item Can't find %s on PATH
661 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
664 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
666 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
667 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
668 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
670 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
672 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
673 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
674 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
676 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
678 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
679 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
680 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
682 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
684 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property for
685 example \p{Lu} is all uppercase letters. if you did mean to use a
686 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
687 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
688 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
693 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
696 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
698 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
699 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
700 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
701 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
702 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
703 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
704 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
705 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
706 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
707 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
708 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
709 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
710 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
711 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
712 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
714 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
716 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
717 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
719 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
721 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
722 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
724 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
726 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
727 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
729 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
731 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
732 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
733 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
734 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
736 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
738 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
739 "string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
740 probably don't want to.)
742 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
744 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
745 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
746 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
747 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
749 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
751 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
752 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
753 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
754 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
755 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
756 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
758 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
760 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
761 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
762 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
763 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
764 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
765 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
768 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
770 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
771 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
772 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
775 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
777 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
778 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
779 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
780 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
782 =item Can't localize through a reference
784 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
785 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
786 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
787 that $ref will still be a reference.
789 =item Can't locate %s
791 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
792 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
793 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
794 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
795 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
796 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
797 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
799 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
801 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
802 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
803 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
804 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
806 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
808 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
809 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
810 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
812 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
814 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
815 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
816 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
818 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
820 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
821 doesn't seem to exist.
823 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
825 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
828 =item Can't modify %s in %s
830 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
831 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
833 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
835 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
838 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
840 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
841 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
843 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
845 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
848 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
850 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
851 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
852 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
853 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
854 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
855 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
857 =item Can't open %s: %s
859 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
860 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
861 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
862 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
865 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
867 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
868 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
869 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
870 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
872 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
874 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
875 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
876 the command line for writing.
878 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
880 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
881 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
882 command line for reading.
884 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
886 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
887 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
888 the command line for writing.
890 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
892 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
893 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
896 =item Can't open perl script%s: %s
898 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
900 =item Can't read CRTL environ
902 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
903 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
904 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
905 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
908 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
910 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
911 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
912 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
913 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
915 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
917 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
918 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
919 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
920 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
921 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
922 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
924 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
926 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
927 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
928 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
930 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
932 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
933 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
935 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
937 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
938 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
940 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
942 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
943 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
944 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
946 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
948 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
951 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
953 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
954 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
957 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
959 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
960 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
961 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
962 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
965 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
967 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
968 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
970 =item Can't stat script "%s"
972 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
973 open already. Bizarre.
975 =item Can't swap uid and euid
977 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
980 =item Can't take log of %g
982 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
983 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
984 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
987 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
989 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
990 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
991 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
993 =item Can't undef active subroutine
995 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
996 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
997 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1001 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1002 as the main Perl stack.
1004 =item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
1006 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1007 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1008 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1009 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1011 =item Can't upgrade to undef
1013 (P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
1014 upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
1017 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1019 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1020 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1022 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1024 (P) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1025 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1026 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1028 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1030 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1031 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1033 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1035 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1036 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1037 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1039 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1041 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1044 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1046 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1047 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1048 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1049 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1052 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1054 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1055 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1056 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1057 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1060 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1062 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1063 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1064 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1066 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1068 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1069 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1071 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1073 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1074 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1075 didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1077 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1079 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1080 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1081 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1082 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1083 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1086 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1088 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1089 references can be weakened.
1091 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1093 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1094 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1095 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1097 =item Character in "C" format wrapped
1103 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1104 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1105 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1109 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1112 =item Character in "c" format wrapped
1118 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1119 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1120 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1122 pack("c", $x & 255);
1124 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1127 =item Cleanup skipped %d active threads
1129 (W) When using threaded Perl, the main thread exited while there were
1130 still other threads running. This is not a good sign: you should
1131 either explicitly join the threads, or somehow be certain that all
1132 the non-main threads have finished. See L<threads>.
1134 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1136 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1138 =item %s: Command not found
1140 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1141 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1143 =item Compilation failed in require
1145 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1146 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1147 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1149 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1151 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1152 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1153 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1154 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1155 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1156 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1157 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1158 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1159 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1161 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1163 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1164 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1165 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1167 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1169 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1170 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1171 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1172 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1175 =item Constant is not %s reference
1177 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1178 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1179 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1180 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1181 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1183 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1185 (S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1186 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1187 commentary and workarounds.
1189 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1191 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1192 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1195 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1197 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1198 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1200 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1202 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1204 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1206 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1207 expression compiler gave it.
1209 =item corrupted regexp program
1211 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1214 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1216 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1218 =item C<-p> destination: %s
1220 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1221 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1222 redirected it with select().)
1224 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1226 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1227 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1229 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1231 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1232 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1233 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1234 which case it indicates something else.
1236 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1238 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1239 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1240 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1242 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1244 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1245 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1246 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1248 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1250 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1251 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1253 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1255 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1256 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1257 that triggers this error.
1259 =item Did not produce a valid header
1263 =item %s did not return a true value
1265 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1266 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1267 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1268 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1270 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1272 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1275 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1277 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1278 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1281 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1283 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1284 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1289 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1290 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1292 =item Document contains no data
1296 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1298 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1299 define a C<$VERSION.>
1301 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1303 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1305 =item do_study: out of memory
1307 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1309 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1311 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1312 found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1313 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1314 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1315 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1316 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1317 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1318 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1320 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1322 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1323 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1325 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1327 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1330 =item elseif should be elsif
1332 (S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1333 Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1334 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1335 unlikely to be what you want.
1339 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1340 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1341 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1343 =item entering effective %s failed
1345 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1346 effective uids or gids failed.
1348 =item Error converting file specification %s
1350 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1351 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1352 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1353 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1354 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1356 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1358 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1359 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1360 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1362 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1364 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1365 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1366 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1367 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1368 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1369 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1371 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1373 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1374 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1375 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1377 =item Excessively long <> operator
1379 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1380 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1381 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1382 variable and glob that.
1384 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1386 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1388 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1390 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1392 =item Exiting eval via %s
1394 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1395 goto, or a loop control statement.
1397 =item Exiting format via %s
1399 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1400 goto, or a loop control statement.
1402 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1404 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1405 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1406 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1408 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1410 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1411 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1413 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1415 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1416 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1418 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1420 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1421 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1422 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1423 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1425 =item %s: Expression syntax
1427 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1428 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1430 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1432 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1433 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1434 routines has been prematurely ended.
1436 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1438 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1439 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1440 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1441 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1442 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1444 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1446 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1447 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1448 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1449 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1451 =item fcntl is not implemented
1453 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1454 PDP-11 or something?
1456 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1458 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1459 to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1460 or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1461 the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1463 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1465 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1466 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1467 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1468 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1470 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1472 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1473 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1474 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1477 =item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1479 (F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
1480 a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1481 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1484 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1486 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1487 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1488 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1491 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex;
1493 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1495 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
1496 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
1497 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1499 =item Format not terminated
1501 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1502 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1504 =item Format %s redefined
1506 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1509 no warnings 'redefine';
1510 eval "format NAME =...";
1513 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1523 (or something like that).
1525 =item %s found where operator expected
1527 (S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
1528 sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1529 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1530 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1532 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1534 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1536 =item gethostent not implemented
1538 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1539 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1542 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1544 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1545 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1547 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1549 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1550 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1552 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1554 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1555 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1556 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1558 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1560 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1561 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1562 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1565 =item glob failed (%s)
1567 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1568 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1569 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1570 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1571 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1572 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1573 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1574 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1575 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1576 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1577 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1579 =item Glob not terminated
1581 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1582 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1583 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1584 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1586 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1588 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1589 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1591 =item goto must have label
1593 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1594 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1596 =item %s-group starts with a count
1598 (F) In pack/unpack a ()-group started with a count. A count is
1599 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1601 =item %s had compilation errors
1603 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1605 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1607 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1608 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1609 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1611 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1613 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1614 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1616 =item %s has too many errors
1618 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1619 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1621 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1623 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1624 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1625 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1627 =item Identifier too long
1629 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1630 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1631 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1632 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1634 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1636 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1638 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1640 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1641 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1644 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1646 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1647 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1648 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1649 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1650 to your Perl administrator.
1652 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1654 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1655 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1657 =item Illegal division by zero
1659 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1660 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1663 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1665 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1666 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1667 number stopped before the illegal character.
1669 =item Illegal modulus zero
1671 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1672 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1674 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1676 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1677 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1679 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1681 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1683 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1685 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1686 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1688 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1690 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1691 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1693 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1695 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1696 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1697 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1699 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1701 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1702 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1703 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1706 =item (in cleanup) %s
1708 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1709 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1710 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1711 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1712 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1714 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1715 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1717 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1719 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1720 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1721 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1723 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1725 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1726 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1727 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1728 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1729 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1730 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1731 L<perlsec> for more information.
1733 =item Insecure directory in %s
1735 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1736 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1737 the world. See L<perlsec>.
1739 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1741 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1742 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1743 C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
1744 potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1745 known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1747 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1749 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1750 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1751 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1752 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1753 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1754 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1755 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1756 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1759 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1761 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1762 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1765 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1767 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1768 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1769 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1770 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1771 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1772 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1774 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1776 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1777 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1780 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1782 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1783 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1784 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1785 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1787 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1789 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1790 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1792 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1794 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1795 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1797 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1799 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1800 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1802 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1804 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1805 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1806 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1807 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1808 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1810 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator
1812 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1813 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1815 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1817 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1818 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1819 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1822 =item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1824 (F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1825 (W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1828 =item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1830 (F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1832 (W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1835 =item ioctl is not implemented
1837 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1838 strange for a machine that supports C.
1840 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1842 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1843 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1845 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1847 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1848 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1850 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1852 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1853 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1856 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1858 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1861 =item junk on end of regexp
1863 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1865 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1867 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1868 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1871 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1873 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1874 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1877 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1879 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1880 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1883 =item leaving effective %s failed
1885 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1886 effective uids or gids failed.
1888 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1890 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1891 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1894 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
1896 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1897 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1898 instead on the filehandle.)
1900 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1902 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
1903 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1904 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1906 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex;
1908 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1910 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
1911 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
1912 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1914 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1916 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1923 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1924 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1925 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
1926 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
1928 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
1930 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
1931 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
1932 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
1933 when the function is called.
1935 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
1937 Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
1939 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
1940 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
1941 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
1943 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
1945 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
1946 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
1948 =item %s matches null string many times in regex;
1950 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1952 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
1953 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
1954 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
1957 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
1959 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
1960 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
1963 =item % may only be used in unpack
1965 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
1966 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1967 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
1969 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1971 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
1972 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
1974 =item Method %s not permitted
1978 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1980 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1981 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1982 ended earlier on the current line.
1984 =item Misplaced _ in number
1986 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
1987 separate two digits.
1989 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
1991 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
1992 double-quotish context.
1994 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1996 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1997 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1999 =item Missing command in piped open
2001 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2002 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2005 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2007 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2008 they have a name with which they can be found.
2010 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2012 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2013 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2014 can vary from one line to the next.
2016 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2018 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2019 found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2021 =item Missing right brace on %s
2023 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2025 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2027 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2028 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2031 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2033 (S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
2034 found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2035 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2037 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2039 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2040 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2041 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2043 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2046 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2048 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2049 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2052 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2053 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2056 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2058 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2059 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2062 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2064 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2065 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2067 =item Module name must be constant
2069 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2071 =item Module name required with -%c option
2073 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2074 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2075 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2077 =item More than one argument to open
2079 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2080 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2081 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2082 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2084 =item msg%s not implemented
2086 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2088 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2090 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2091 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2093 =item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
2095 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2096 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2097 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2099 =item / must be followed by a, A or Z
2101 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
2102 must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
2103 of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2105 =item / must follow a numeric type
2107 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
2108 follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2110 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2112 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2115 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2117 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2118 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2119 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2121 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2123 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2124 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2125 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2126 provided for this purpose.
2128 =item Negative length
2130 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2131 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2133 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2135 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2136 greater than or equal to zero.
2138 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2140 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2141 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2142 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2144 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2145 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2147 =item %s never introduced
2149 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2150 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2152 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2154 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2155 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2156 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2157 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2159 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2161 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2163 =item No comma allowed after %s
2165 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2166 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2167 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2169 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2170 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2171 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2172 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2173 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2174 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2175 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2176 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2177 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2178 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2179 this error was triggered?
2181 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2183 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2184 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2185 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2187 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2189 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2190 for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2191 define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2192 is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2193 should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
2195 =item No dbm on this machine
2197 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2198 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2200 =item No DBsub routine
2202 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2203 but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2204 didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2205 ordinary subroutine call.
2207 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2209 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2210 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2211 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2213 =item No input file after < on command line
2215 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2216 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2217 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2221 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2222 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2224 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2226 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2227 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2229 =item No output file after > on command line
2231 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2232 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2233 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2235 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2237 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2238 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2239 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2241 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2243 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2244 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2245 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2247 =item No Perl script found in input
2249 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2250 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2252 =item No setregid available
2254 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2257 =item No setreuid available
2259 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2262 =item No space allowed after -%c
2264 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2265 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2267 =item No %s specified for -%c
2269 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2270 you haven't specified one.
2272 =item No such class %s
2274 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2275 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2277 =item No such pipe open
2279 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2280 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2281 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2283 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2285 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2286 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2287 array indices for that to work.
2289 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2291 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2292 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2293 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2294 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2296 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2298 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2299 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2300 names on your system.
2302 =item Not a CODE reference
2304 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2305 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2306 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2309 =item Not a format reference
2311 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2312 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2314 =item Not a GLOB reference
2316 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2317 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2318 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2319 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2321 =item Not a HASH reference
2323 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2324 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2325 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2327 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2329 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2330 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2331 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2333 =item Not a perl script
2335 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2336 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2339 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2341 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2342 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2343 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2345 =item Not a subroutine reference
2347 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2348 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2349 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2352 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2354 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2355 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2357 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2359 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2361 =item Not enough format arguments
2363 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2364 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2368 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2369 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2372 =item %s not allowed in length fields
2374 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
2375 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes. Redesign
2378 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2380 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2381 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2382 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2383 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2384 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2386 =item Null filename used
2388 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2389 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2391 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2393 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2396 =item Null picture in formline
2398 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2399 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2400 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2404 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2406 =item NULL regexp argument
2408 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2410 =item NULL regexp parameter
2412 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2414 =item Number too long
2416 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2417 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2418 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2419 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2422 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2424 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2425 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2428 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2430 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2431 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2432 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2434 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2436 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2438 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2439 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2441 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2443 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2444 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2446 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2448 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2449 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2451 =item Offset outside string
2453 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2454 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2455 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2456 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2458 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2460 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2461 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2463 =item %s() on unopened %s
2465 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2466 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2467 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2471 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2475 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2477 =item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
2479 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2480 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2481 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2482 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2484 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2486 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2487 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2488 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2489 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2492 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2494 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2495 in the current lexical scope.
2497 =item Out of memory!
2499 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2500 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2501 no option but to exit immediately.
2503 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2505 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2506 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2507 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2508 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2510 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2512 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2513 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2516 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2517 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2518 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2519 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2520 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2521 where the failed request happened.
2523 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2525 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2526 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2527 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2529 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2531 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2532 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2535 =item @ outside of string
2537 (F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2538 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2540 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2542 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2543 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2544 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2545 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2549 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2550 page. See L<perlform>.
2554 (P) An internal error.
2556 =item panic: ck_grep
2558 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2560 =item panic: ck_split
2562 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2564 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2566 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2567 there are in the savestack.
2569 =item panic: del_backref
2571 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2576 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2577 it wasn't an eval context.
2579 =item panic: pp_match%s
2581 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2584 =item panic: do_subst
2586 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2589 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2591 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2596 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2600 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2601 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2603 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2605 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2607 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2609 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2611 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2613 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2617 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2618 it wasn't a block context.
2620 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2622 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2625 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2627 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2628 invalid enum on the top of it.
2630 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2632 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2633 references to an object.
2637 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2639 =item panic: mapstart
2641 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2643 =item panic: null array
2645 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2647 =item panic: pad_alloc
2649 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2650 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2652 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2654 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2655 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2657 =item panic: pad_free po
2659 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2661 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2663 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2664 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2666 =item panic: pad_sv po
2668 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2670 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2672 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2673 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2675 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2677 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2679 =item panic: pp_iter
2681 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2683 =item panic: pp_split
2685 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2687 =item panic: realloc
2689 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2691 =item panic: restartop
2693 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2694 didn't supply the destination.
2698 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2699 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2701 =item panic: scan_num
2703 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2705 =item panic: sv_insert
2707 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2710 =item panic: top_env
2712 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2716 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2718 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2720 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2721 to even) byte length.
2723 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2725 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2731 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2733 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2735 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2737 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2738 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2739 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2741 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2743 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2744 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2746 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2748 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2750 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2751 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2754 are supported and installed on your system.
2755 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2757 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2758 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2759 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2760 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2761 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2762 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2763 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2764 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2765 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2766 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2768 =item perlio: argument list not closed for layer "%s"
2770 (S) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you forgot
2771 the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
2772 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
2773 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
2774 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
2775 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2777 =item perlio: invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2779 (S) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2780 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2781 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2782 list was terminated too soon.
2784 =item perlio: unknown layer "%s"
2786 (S) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
2787 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
2788 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
2789 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
2790 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
2791 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2793 =item Permission denied
2795 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2797 =item pid %x not a child
2799 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2800 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2801 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2803 =item P must have an explicit size
2805 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2807 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex;
2809 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2811 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2812 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2813 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2814 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2815 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2816 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2818 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2820 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2822 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2823 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2824 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2825 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2826 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2827 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2829 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
2831 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2833 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
2834 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
2835 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
2836 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
2837 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2838 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2840 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex;
2842 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2844 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2845 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2846 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2847 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2848 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2850 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2852 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2853 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2855 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2857 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
2858 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
2859 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2860 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
2862 You probably wrote something like this:
2869 when you should have written this:
2876 If you really want comments, build your list the
2877 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2881 'b', # another comment
2884 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2886 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2887 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2888 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2891 You probably wrote something like this:
2895 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2896 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
2900 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2902 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2903 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2904 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2905 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2907 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
2909 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
2910 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
2911 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
2912 to the array you apparently lost track of.
2914 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2916 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2917 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2919 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2921 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
2925 use attrs qw(locked);
2928 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2934 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2935 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2937 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2939 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
2943 is now misinterpreted as
2947 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2948 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2949 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2952 =item Premature end of script headers
2956 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2958 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
2959 before now. Check your control flow.
2961 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
2963 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
2964 before now. Check your control flow.
2966 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
2968 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2969 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2970 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2971 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
2974 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
2976 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2977 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
2979 =item Prototype not terminated
2981 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
2984 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex;
2986 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2988 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
2989 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
2990 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2992 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression;
2994 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2996 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2997 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
2998 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
2999 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3000 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3002 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3005 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3007 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3008 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3009 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3010 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3012 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3014 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3015 before now. Check your control flow.
3017 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3019 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3021 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3023 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3026 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3028 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3029 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3030 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3032 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3034 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3035 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3037 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3039 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3040 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3043 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3045 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3046 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3047 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3048 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3050 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3051 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3052 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3053 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3055 =item Reference is already weak
3057 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3058 Doing so has no effect.
3060 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3062 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3063 a reference count of other than 1.
3065 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex;
3067 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3069 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3070 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3071 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3072 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3074 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3077 =item regexp memory corruption
3079 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3080 expression compiler gave it.
3082 =item Regexp out of space
3084 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3087 =item Repeat count in pack overflows
3089 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3090 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3092 =item Repeat count in unpack overflows
3094 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3095 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3097 =item Reversed %s= operator
3099 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3100 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3102 =item Runaway format
3104 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3105 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3106 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3107 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3108 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3110 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3112 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3113 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3114 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3115 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3116 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3117 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3118 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3120 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3121 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3122 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3125 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3127 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3128 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3129 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3130 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3131 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3132 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3133 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3135 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3136 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3137 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3140 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3142 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3143 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3144 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3145 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3147 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3149 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3150 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3152 =item Search pattern not terminated
3154 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3155 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3156 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3158 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3160 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3161 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3163 =item select not implemented
3165 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3167 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3169 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3170 the current implementation.
3172 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3174 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3175 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3177 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3179 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3180 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3182 =item sem%s not implemented
3184 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3186 =item send() on closed socket %s
3188 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3189 before now. Check your control flow.
3191 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3193 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3194 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3197 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex;
3199 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3201 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3202 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3203 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3206 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex;
3208 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3210 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3211 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3212 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3214 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex;
3216 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3218 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3219 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3220 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3222 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex;
3224 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3226 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3227 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3228 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3231 =item 500 Server error
3237 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3238 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3239 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3240 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3241 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3242 produce a valid header".
3244 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3246 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3247 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3248 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3249 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3250 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3251 Please see the following for more information:
3253 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3254 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3255 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3257 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3259 =item setegid() not implemented
3261 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3262 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3265 =item seteuid() not implemented
3267 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3268 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3271 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3273 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3274 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3277 =item setrgid() not implemented
3279 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3280 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3283 =item setruid() not implemented
3285 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3286 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3289 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3291 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3292 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3293 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3295 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3297 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3298 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3300 =item shm%s not implemented
3302 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3304 =item <> should be quotes
3306 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3309 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3311 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3312 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3313 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3314 probably not what you had in mind.
3316 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3318 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3321 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3323 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3324 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3326 =item sort is now a reserved word
3328 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3329 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3331 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3333 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3334 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3335 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3337 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3339 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3340 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3342 =item splice() offset past end of array
3344 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3345 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3346 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3347 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3352 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3353 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3354 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3356 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3358 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3359 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3360 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3361 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3364 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3366 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3367 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3369 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
3371 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3372 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3373 C<can> may break this.
3375 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3377 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3380 no warnings 'redefine';
3381 eval "sub name { ... }";
3384 =item Substitution loop
3386 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3387 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3388 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3389 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3391 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3393 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3394 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3395 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3397 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3399 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3400 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3401 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3403 =item substr outside of string
3405 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3406 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3407 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3408 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3409 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3411 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3413 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3414 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3416 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex;
3418 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3420 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3421 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3422 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3423 clustering parentheses:
3425 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3427 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3428 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3430 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex;
3432 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3434 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3435 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3436 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3438 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3440 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3441 and effective uids or gids.
3445 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3447 A keyword is misspelled.
3448 A semicolon is missing.
3450 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3451 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3452 A closing quote is missing.
3454 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3455 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3456 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3457 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3458 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3459 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3460 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3461 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3462 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3465 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3467 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3468 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3471 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3473 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3474 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3475 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3479 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3481 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3483 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3484 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3485 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3486 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3488 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3490 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3491 before now. Check your control flow.
3493 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3495 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3496 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3498 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3500 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3501 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3503 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3505 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3506 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3515 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3516 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3518 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3520 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3521 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3522 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3523 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3526 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3528 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3529 to the probings of Configure.
3531 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3533 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3534 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3535 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3538 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3540 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3542 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3543 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3544 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3545 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3546 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3547 target of the change to
3548 %ENV which produced the warning.
3550 =item times not implemented
3552 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3553 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3555 =item Too few args to syscall
3557 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3558 system call to call, silly dilly.
3560 =item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3562 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3563 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3564 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3565 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3568 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3569 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3570 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3571 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3573 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3574 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3576 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3578 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3579 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3580 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3582 =item Too late to run %s block
3584 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3585 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3586 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3587 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3590 =item Too many args to syscall
3592 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3594 =item Too many arguments for %s
3596 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3602 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3603 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3605 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3607 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3608 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3610 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3612 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3613 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3614 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3616 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3618 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3621 =item truncate not implemented
3623 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3624 Configure knows about.
3626 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3628 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3629 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3630 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3631 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3633 =item umask not implemented
3635 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3636 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3638 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3640 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3642 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3644 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3645 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3647 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3649 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3650 many values were temporarily localized.
3652 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3654 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3655 many blocks were entered and left.
3657 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3659 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3660 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3662 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3664 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3665 another package? See L<perlform>.
3667 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3669 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3670 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3672 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3674 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3675 since been undefined.
3677 =item Undefined subroutine called
3679 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3680 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3682 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3684 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3685 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3687 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3689 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3690 another package? See L<perlform>.
3692 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3694 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3695 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3698 =item %s: Undefined variable
3700 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3701 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3703 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3705 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3706 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3708 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3710 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3711 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3712 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3714 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3716 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3719 =item Unknown discipline '%s'
3721 (F) You specified an unknown I/O discipline. See L<open> for valid
3722 filehandle disciplines and L<perlfunc/opendir> for valid directory
3725 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3727 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3729 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex;
3731 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3733 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3734 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3735 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3736 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3737 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3740 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3741 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3743 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3745 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3746 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3747 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
3749 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3751 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3752 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3753 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3754 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3756 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3758 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
3759 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
3761 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
3762 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
3765 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3767 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
3768 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
3769 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
3770 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3772 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3774 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
3775 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3776 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3777 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3779 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
3781 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3782 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3783 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3784 you were last editing.
3786 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3788 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3789 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3790 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3793 =item Unrecognized character %s
3795 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3796 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3797 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
3799 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3801 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3802 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3803 understood literally.
3805 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex;
3807 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3809 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3810 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3811 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
3812 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3813 escape was discovered.
3815 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3817 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3820 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3822 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3823 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3826 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
3828 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3829 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3830 bad switch on your behalf.)
3832 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3834 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3835 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3836 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
3838 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3840 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3842 =item Unsupported function %s
3844 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3845 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3847 =item Unsupported function fork
3849 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3851 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3852 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3853 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
3855 =item Unsupported script encoding
3857 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
3858 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
3860 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3862 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3863 least that's what Configure thought.
3865 =item Unterminated attribute list
3867 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3868 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3869 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3870 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
3872 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3874 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3875 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
3876 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3877 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3879 =item Unterminated compressed integer
3881 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3882 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3883 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3885 =item Unterminated <> operator
3887 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
3888 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3889 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3890 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
3892 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
3894 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3895 still valid when C<untie> was called.
3897 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex;
3899 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3901 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
3902 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
3904 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
3908 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
3910 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3911 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3913 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex;
3915 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3917 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
3918 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
3920 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
3924 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
3926 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3927 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3929 =item Useless use of %s in void context
3931 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
3932 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3933 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3934 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3935 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3936 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3941 when you meant to say
3943 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3945 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3946 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3951 when you should have said
3955 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3956 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3957 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3958 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3959 L<perlref> for more on this.
3961 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
3962 since they are often used in statements like
3964 1 while sub_with_side_effects() ;
3966 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
3969 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
3971 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3973 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
3975 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
3979 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
3981 =item Useless use of %s with no values
3983 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
3984 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
3985 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
3986 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
3987 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
3988 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
3990 =item "use" not allowed in expression
3992 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3993 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3995 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
3997 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3998 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4000 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4002 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4003 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4005 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4007 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4008 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4009 used. (This may change in the future.)
4011 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4013 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4014 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4015 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4017 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4019 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4020 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4022 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4024 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4025 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4026 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4029 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4030 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4032 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4034 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4035 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4036 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4038 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4040 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4041 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4042 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4043 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4046 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4047 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4048 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4049 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4052 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4053 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4054 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4055 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4058 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4059 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4060 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4062 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4064 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4065 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4066 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4068 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4070 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4071 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4072 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4075 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4077 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4078 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4080 =item Use of $* is deprecated
4082 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
4083 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
4084 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
4085 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
4087 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4089 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4090 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4091 old way has bad side effects.
4093 =item Use of $# is deprecated
4095 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
4096 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4098 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4100 (W) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4101 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4102 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4104 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4105 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4106 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4107 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4109 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4111 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4112 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4113 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4114 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4115 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4116 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4118 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4120 (W taint) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4121 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4122 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4123 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4125 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4127 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4128 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4129 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4131 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4132 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4133 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4134 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4135 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4136 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4139 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4141 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4142 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4143 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4144 be removed in a future version.
4146 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4148 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4149 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4150 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4151 removed in a future version.
4153 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4155 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4156 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4157 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4158 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4159 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4160 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4161 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4163 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4165 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4166 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4167 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4168 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4169 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4170 C<defined> operator.
4172 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4174 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4175 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4176 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4179 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4181 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4182 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4183 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4184 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4185 front of your variable.
4187 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4189 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4190 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4191 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4192 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4193 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4195 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
4197 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
4198 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
4199 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
4200 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
4202 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
4204 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
4205 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
4206 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
4207 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
4208 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
4209 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
4211 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
4212 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
4213 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
4214 between interferes with this feature.
4216 =item Variable syntax
4218 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4219 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4222 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4224 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4225 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
4227 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
4228 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4229 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4230 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4231 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4232 variable will no longer be shared.
4234 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
4235 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
4236 will I<never> share the given variable.
4238 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4239 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4240 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
4241 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4243 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex;
4245 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4247 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4248 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4249 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4251 =item Version number must be a constant number
4253 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4254 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4257 =item v-string in use/require is non-portable
4259 (W) The use of v-strings is non-portable to older, pre-5.6, Perls.
4260 If you want your scripts to be backward portable, use the floating
4261 point version number: for example, instead of C<use 5.6.1> say
4262 C<use 5.006_001>. This of course won't help: the older Perls
4263 won't suddenly start understanding newer features, but at least
4264 they will show a sensible error message indicating the required
4267 =item Warning: something's wrong
4269 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4270 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4272 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4274 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4275 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4278 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4280 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4281 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4282 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4283 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4287 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4291 but in actual fact, you got
4295 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4297 =item Wide character in %s
4299 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4300 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print) but can be
4301 turned off by C<no warnings 'utf8';>. You are supposed to explicitly
4302 mark the filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4304 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4306 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4307 before now. Check your control flow.
4309 =item X outside of string
4311 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
4312 the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4314 =item x outside of string
4316 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4317 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4319 =item Xsub "%s" called in sort
4321 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4324 =item Xsub called in sort
4326 (F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
4329 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4331 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4332 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4333 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4336 =item You need to quote "%s"
4338 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4339 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4340 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4341 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4342 what you want, put an & in front.)