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 (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by 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<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($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 Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
94 (W ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
95 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
96 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
97 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
98 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
99 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
100 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
102 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
104 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
105 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
106 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
107 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
108 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
109 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
111 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
116 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
117 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
118 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
119 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
120 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
122 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
123 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
124 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
125 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
126 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
127 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
128 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
129 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
131 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
133 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
134 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
135 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
138 =item Ambiguous use of 's//le...' resolved as 's// le...'; Rewrite as 's//el' if you meant 'use locale rules and evaluate rhs as an expression'. In Perl 5.18, it will be resolved the other way
140 (W deprecated, ambiguous) You wrote a pattern match with substitution
141 immediately followed by "le". In Perl 5.16 and earlier, this is
142 resolved as meaning to take the result of the substitution, and see if
143 it is stringwise less-than-or-equal-to what follows in the expression.
144 Having the "le" immediately following a pattern is deprecated behavior,
145 so in Perl 5.18, this expression will be resolved as meaning to do the
146 pattern match using the rules of the current locale, and evaluate the
147 rhs as an expression when doing the substitution. In 5.14, and 5.16 if
148 you want the latter interpretation, you can simply write "el" instead.
149 But note that the C</l> modifier should not be used explicitly anyway;
150 you should use C<use locale> instead. See L<perllocale>.
152 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
154 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
155 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
156 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
158 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
160 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
161 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
162 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
163 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
164 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
166 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
173 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
175 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
176 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
177 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
178 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
179 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
180 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
183 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
185 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
187 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
189 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
190 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
196 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
198 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
204 or a hash or array slice, such as:
206 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
207 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
209 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
211 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
212 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
215 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
217 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
218 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
219 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
221 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
223 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
224 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
225 take care of transforming data between external and internal
226 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
227 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
228 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
229 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
231 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
233 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
234 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
236 =item assertion botched: %s
238 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
240 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
242 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
244 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
246 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
247 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
249 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
251 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
252 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
253 know which context to supply to the right side.
255 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
257 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily
258 the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
259 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
260 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
261 thread. See L<threads>.
263 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
265 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
266 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
268 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
270 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
271 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
272 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
278 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
280 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
281 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
284 bless $self, "$proto";
286 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
288 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
289 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
290 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
291 callback on the array.
293 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
295 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
296 which is not in its key set.
298 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
300 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
301 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
303 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
305 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
306 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
307 outside any of those arenas.
309 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
311 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
312 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
313 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
314 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
316 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
318 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
319 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
320 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
321 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
324 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
326 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
328 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
330 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
331 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
332 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
333 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
334 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
335 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
338 =item Attempt to join self
340 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
341 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
342 to move the join() to some other thread.
344 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
346 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
347 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
348 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
349 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
350 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
353 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
355 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
356 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
357 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
360 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
362 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
363 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
364 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
366 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
369 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
371 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
372 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
373 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
375 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
377 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
378 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
379 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
380 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
382 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
384 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
385 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
386 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
387 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
389 =item av_reify called on tied array
391 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
392 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
394 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
396 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
397 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
398 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
399 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
401 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
403 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
404 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
405 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
407 =item Bad filehandle: %s
409 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
410 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
411 open(), or did it in another package.
413 =item Bad free() ignored
415 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
416 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
417 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
419 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
420 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
421 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
425 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
427 =item Badly placed ()'s
429 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
430 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
433 =item Bad name after %s
435 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
436 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
445 $sym = "mypack::$var";
447 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
449 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
452 =item Bad realloc() ignored
454 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
455 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
456 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
458 =item Bad symbol for array
460 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
461 wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
465 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
466 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
468 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
470 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
471 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
473 =item Bad symbol for hash
475 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
476 wasn't a symbol table entry.
478 =item Bareword found in conditional
480 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
481 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
482 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
486 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
489 use constant TYPO => 1;
490 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
492 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
494 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
496 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
497 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
498 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
500 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
502 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
503 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
504 you need to predeclare a package?
506 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
508 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
509 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
512 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
514 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
515 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
516 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
517 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
518 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
520 =item \1 better written as $1
522 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
523 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
524 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
525 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
526 there are more than 9 backreferences.
528 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
530 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
531 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
532 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
534 =item bind() on closed socket %s
536 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
537 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
539 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
541 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
542 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
544 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
546 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
548 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
549 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
550 itself in a future release.
552 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
554 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
556 =item Bizarre copy of %s
558 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
561 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
563 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
564 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
565 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
567 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
569 (P) When starting a new thread or return values from a thread, Perl
570 encountered an invalid data type.
572 =item Callback called exit
574 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
575 exited by calling exit.
577 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
579 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
580 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
581 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
582 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
583 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
584 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
585 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
586 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
588 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
590 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
591 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
592 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
593 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
595 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
597 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
598 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
600 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
602 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
603 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
604 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
605 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
607 =item Cannot copy to %s
609 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
610 be directly assigned to.
612 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
614 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
615 either with open() or binmode().
617 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
619 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
620 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
622 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
624 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
625 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
626 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
627 Perl code, but are only used internally.
629 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
631 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
632 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
633 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
635 =item Can't bless non-reference value
637 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
638 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
640 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
642 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
643 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
645 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
647 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
649 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
651 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
652 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
653 like this will reproduce the error:
656 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
657 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
659 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
661 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
662 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
663 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
664 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
666 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
668 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
669 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
670 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
671 Something like this will reproduce the error:
674 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
675 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
677 =item Can't chdir to %s
679 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
680 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
682 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
684 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
687 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
689 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
690 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
700 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
702 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
704 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
707 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
709 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
710 quotas or other plumbing problems.
712 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
714 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
715 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
717 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
719 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
720 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
721 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
722 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
724 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
726 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
727 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
729 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
731 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
734 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
736 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
737 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
738 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
740 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
742 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
743 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
744 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
746 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
748 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
749 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The
750 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
751 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
753 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
755 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
756 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
758 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
760 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
761 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
764 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
766 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
767 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
768 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
769 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
771 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
773 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
774 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
775 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
776 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
777 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
778 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
783 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
784 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
785 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
787 =item Can't execute %s
789 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
790 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
792 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
794 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
795 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
797 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
799 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
800 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
801 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
802 for a complete list of available properties.
804 =item Can't find label %s
806 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
807 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
809 =item Can't find %s on PATH
811 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
814 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
816 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
817 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
818 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
820 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
822 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
823 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
824 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
826 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
828 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
829 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
830 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
831 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
832 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
834 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
836 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
837 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
838 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
839 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
840 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
841 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
842 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
847 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
850 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
852 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
855 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
857 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
858 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
859 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
860 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
861 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
862 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
863 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
864 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
865 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
866 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
867 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
868 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
869 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
870 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
871 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
873 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
875 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
876 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
878 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
880 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
881 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
883 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
885 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
886 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
888 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
890 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
891 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
892 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
893 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
895 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
897 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
898 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
899 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
901 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
903 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
906 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
908 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
909 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
910 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
911 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
913 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
915 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
916 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
917 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
918 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
919 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
920 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
922 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
924 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
925 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
928 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
930 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
931 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
932 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
933 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
934 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
935 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
938 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
940 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
941 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
943 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
945 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
946 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
947 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
948 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
949 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
950 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
953 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
955 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
956 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
957 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
960 =item Can't localize through a reference
962 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
963 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
964 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
965 that $ref will still be a reference.
967 =item Can't locate %s
969 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
970 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
971 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
972 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
973 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
974 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
975 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
977 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
979 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
980 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
981 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
982 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
984 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
986 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
987 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
988 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
990 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
992 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
993 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
994 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
996 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
998 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
999 doesn't seem to exist.
1001 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
1003 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
1004 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
1006 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
1008 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
1011 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1013 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1014 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1016 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1018 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1021 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1023 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1024 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1026 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1028 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1031 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1033 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1034 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1035 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1036 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1037 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1038 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1042 (F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1043 the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1044 named by that variable could not be opened.
1046 =item Can't open %s: %s
1048 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1049 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1050 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1051 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1052 you named on the command line.
1054 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1055 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1057 =item Can't open a reference
1059 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1060 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1064 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1065 open is not supported.
1067 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1069 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1070 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1071 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1072 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1074 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1076 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1077 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1078 the command line for writing.
1080 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1082 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1083 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1084 command line for reading.
1086 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1088 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1089 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1090 the command line for writing.
1092 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1094 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1095 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1098 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1100 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1102 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1103 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1104 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1106 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1108 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1109 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1110 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1111 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1114 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1116 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1117 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1118 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1119 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1120 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1121 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1123 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1125 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1126 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1127 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1129 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1131 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1132 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1134 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1136 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1137 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1139 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1141 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1142 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1143 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1144 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1146 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1148 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1149 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1150 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1152 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1154 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1155 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1158 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1160 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1161 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1163 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1165 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1166 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1167 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1168 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1169 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1171 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1173 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1174 open already. Bizarre.
1176 =item Can't take log of %g
1178 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1179 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1180 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1183 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1185 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1186 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1187 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1189 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1191 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1192 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1193 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1195 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1197 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1198 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1199 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1200 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1202 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1204 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1205 other than "=" after the module name.
1207 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1209 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1210 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1211 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1213 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1215 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1216 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1218 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1220 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1221 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1223 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1225 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1226 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1227 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1229 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1231 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1232 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1233 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1235 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1237 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1240 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1242 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1243 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1244 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1245 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1248 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1250 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1251 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1252 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1253 is inside a big-endian group.
1255 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1257 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1258 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1259 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1260 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1263 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1265 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1266 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1267 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1269 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1271 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1272 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1273 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1274 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1275 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1276 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1277 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1279 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1281 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1282 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1283 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1285 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1287 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1288 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1289 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1290 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1291 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1294 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1296 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1297 references can be weakened.
1299 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1301 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1302 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1303 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1304 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1306 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1308 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1309 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1310 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1312 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1314 (F)(W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1315 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.18. In the
1316 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1317 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1319 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1321 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1327 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1328 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1329 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1333 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1336 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1342 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1343 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1346 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1348 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1354 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1355 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1356 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1358 pack("c", $x & 255);
1360 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1363 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1365 (W unpack) You tried something like
1367 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1369 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1370 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1371 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1373 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1375 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1377 (W pack) You tried something like
1379 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1381 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1382 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1383 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1385 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1387 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1389 (W unpack) You tried something like
1391 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1393 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1394 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1395 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1397 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1399 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1401 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1402 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1403 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1404 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.18. Just use a
1405 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1407 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1409 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1410 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1411 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1414 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1416 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1418 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1420 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1422 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1424 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1425 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1427 =item Closure prototype called
1429 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1430 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1431 This subroutine cannot be called.
1433 =item Code missing after '/'
1435 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1436 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1438 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1440 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches succeed
1442 (W utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1445 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1446 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1447 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1448 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1449 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1452 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1453 code point. For example,
1455 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1457 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1459 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1463 This may be counterintuitive at times, as both these fail:
1465 chr(0x110000) =~ \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True} # Fails.
1466 chr(0x110000) =~ \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False} # Also fails!
1468 and both these succeed:
1470 chr(0x110000) =~ \P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True} # Succeeds.
1471 chr(0x110000) =~ \P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False} # Also succeeds!
1473 =item %s: Command not found
1475 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1476 shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1477 into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1481 =item Compilation failed in require
1483 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1484 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1485 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1487 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1489 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1490 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1491 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1492 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1493 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1494 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1495 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1496 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1497 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1499 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1501 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1502 call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked.
1503 The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake up another thread
1504 that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1505 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1506 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1507 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1508 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1510 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1512 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1513 call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The
1514 cond_signal() function is used to wake up another thread that
1515 is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1516 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1517 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1518 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1519 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1521 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1523 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1524 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1525 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1527 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1529 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1530 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1531 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1532 corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1534 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1536 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1537 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape.
1539 =item Constant is not %s reference
1541 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1542 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1543 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1544 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1545 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1547 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1549 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1550 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1551 for commentary and workarounds.
1553 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1555 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1556 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1559 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1561 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1562 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1564 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1566 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1567 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1568 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1569 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1571 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1572 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1574 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1576 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1578 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1580 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1581 expression compiler gave it.
1583 =item corrupted regexp program
1585 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1588 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1590 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1592 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1594 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1595 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1598 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1600 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1602 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1603 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1604 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1605 which case it indicates something else.
1607 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1608 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1610 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1612 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1613 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1614 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1616 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1618 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1619 discouraged since 5.004.
1621 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1622 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1623 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1624 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1626 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1627 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1633 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1634 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1635 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1639 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1641 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1642 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1643 of the C<....> part.
1645 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1648 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1650 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1651 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1653 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1655 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1656 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1657 that triggers this error.
1659 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1661 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1662 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1663 are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1664 and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1665 parentheses or colons.
1667 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1669 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1670 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1671 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1672 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1673 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1674 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1675 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1677 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1681 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1683 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1684 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1686 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1688 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1690 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1691 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1692 than to create a dangling reference.
1694 =item Did not produce a valid header
1698 =item %s did not return a true value
1700 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1701 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1702 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1703 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1705 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1707 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1710 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1712 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1713 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1716 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1718 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1719 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1724 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1725 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1727 =item Document contains no data
1731 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1733 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1734 define a C<$VERSION.>
1736 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1738 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1739 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1741 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1743 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1745 =item do_study: out of memory
1747 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1749 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1751 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1752 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1753 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1754 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1755 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1756 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1757 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1758 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1760 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1762 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1763 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1765 =item dump is not supported
1767 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1769 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1771 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1774 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1776 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1777 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1779 =item elseif should be elsif
1781 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1782 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1783 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1784 unlikely to be what you want.
1788 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1789 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1790 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1792 =item entering effective %s failed
1794 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1795 effective uids or gids failed.
1797 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1799 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1800 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1801 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1803 =item Error converting file specification %s
1805 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1806 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1807 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1808 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1809 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1811 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1813 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1814 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1815 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1817 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1819 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1820 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1821 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1822 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1823 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1824 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1825 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1827 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1829 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1830 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1831 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1833 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1835 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1836 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1838 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1841 =item Excessively long <> operator
1843 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1844 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1845 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1846 variable and glob that.
1848 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1850 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1851 OS. See L<perlport>.
1853 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1855 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1857 =item Exiting eval via %s
1859 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1860 goto, or a loop control statement.
1862 =item Exiting format via %s
1864 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1865 goto, or a loop control statement.
1867 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1869 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1870 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1871 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1873 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1875 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1876 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1878 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1880 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1881 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1883 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1885 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1886 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1887 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1888 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1890 =item %s: Expression syntax
1892 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1893 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1895 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1897 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1898 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1899 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1901 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1903 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1904 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1905 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1906 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1907 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1909 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1911 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1912 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1913 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1914 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1916 =item fcntl is not implemented
1918 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1919 PDP-11 or something?
1921 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1923 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1926 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1928 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1929 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1930 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1931 C<u63> as the format.
1933 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1935 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1936 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1937 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1938 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1940 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1942 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1943 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1944 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1945 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1946 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1947 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1949 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1951 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1952 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1955 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1957 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1958 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1960 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1962 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1963 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1964 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1967 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1969 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1970 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1971 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1974 =item Format not terminated
1976 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1977 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1979 =item Format %s redefined
1981 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1984 no warnings 'redefine';
1985 eval "format NAME =...";
1988 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1998 (or something like that).
2000 =item %s found where operator expected
2002 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2003 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2004 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2005 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2007 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2009 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2011 =item gethostent not implemented
2013 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2014 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2017 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2019 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2020 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2022 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2024 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2025 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2027 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2029 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2030 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2031 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2033 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2035 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2036 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2037 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2038 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2040 =item glob failed (%s)
2042 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2043 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2044 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2045 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2046 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2047 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2048 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2049 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2050 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2051 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2052 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2054 =item Glob not terminated
2056 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2057 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2058 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2059 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2061 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2063 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2064 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2065 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2066 not-a-number value).
2068 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2070 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2071 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2073 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2075 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2076 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2078 =item goto must have label
2080 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2081 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2083 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2085 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2086 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2087 has since been undefined.
2089 =item ()-group starts with a count
2091 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2092 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2094 =item %s had compilation errors.
2096 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2098 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2100 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2101 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2102 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2104 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2106 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2107 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2109 =item %s has too many errors
2111 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2112 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2114 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
2118 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following
2119 a pattern without an intervening space. If you are trying to use
2120 the C</le> flags on a substitution, use C</el> instead. Otherwise, add
2121 white space between the pattern and following word to eliminate
2122 the warning. As an example of the latter, the two constructs:
2125 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
2126 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
2128 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow
2129 the first form in Perl 5.18. And,
2131 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
2133 will be disallowed too.
2135 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2137 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2138 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2139 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2141 =item Identifier too long
2143 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2144 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2145 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2146 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2148 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2150 (W) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a zero-length
2151 sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class its
2152 behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2153 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2155 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2157 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2159 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2161 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2162 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2165 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2167 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2168 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2170 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2172 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2173 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2174 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2175 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2176 to your Perl administrator.
2178 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2180 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2181 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2183 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2185 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2186 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2188 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2190 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2192 =item Illegal division by zero
2194 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2195 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2198 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2200 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2201 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2202 number stopped before the illegal character.
2204 =item Illegal modulus zero
2206 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2207 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2209 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2211 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2212 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2214 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2216 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2218 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2220 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2221 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2223 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2225 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2226 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2228 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2230 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2231 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2232 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2234 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2236 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2237 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2238 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2241 =item (in cleanup) %s
2243 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2244 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2245 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2246 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2247 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2249 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2250 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2252 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2254 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2255 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2256 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2258 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2260 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2261 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2262 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2264 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2266 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2267 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2268 either consume text or fail.
2270 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2273 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2275 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2276 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2277 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2278 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2279 supported in a future perl release.
2281 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2283 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2284 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2285 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2286 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2287 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2288 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2289 L<perlsec> for more information.
2291 =item Insecure directory in %s
2293 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2294 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2295 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2298 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2300 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2301 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2302 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2303 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2304 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2306 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2308 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2309 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2310 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2311 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2313 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2315 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2316 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2317 integers for your architecture.
2319 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2321 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2322 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2323 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2324 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2325 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2326 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2327 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2328 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2331 =item Integer overflow in version
2333 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2334 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2335 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2336 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2337 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2340 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2342 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2343 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2346 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2348 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2349 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2350 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2351 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2352 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2353 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2355 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2357 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2358 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2361 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2363 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2364 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2365 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2366 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2368 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2370 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2371 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2373 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2375 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2376 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2378 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2380 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2381 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2383 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2385 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2386 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2387 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2388 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2389 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2390 escape was discovered.
2392 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2394 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2395 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2396 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2398 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2400 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2401 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2402 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2403 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2405 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2407 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2408 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2409 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2410 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2412 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2414 (F) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl with
2415 the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2416 See also L<< perlrun/B<-D>I<letters> >>.
2418 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2420 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2421 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2422 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2423 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2424 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2426 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2428 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2429 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2431 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2433 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2434 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2435 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2438 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2440 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2441 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2442 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2443 list was terminated too soon.
2445 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2447 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2448 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2449 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2450 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2451 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2452 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2454 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2456 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2457 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2459 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2462 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2464 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2465 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2466 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2467 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2468 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2469 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2470 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2471 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2472 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2473 for more details on allowed version formats.
2475 =item Invalid version object
2477 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2478 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2479 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2481 =item ioctl is not implemented
2483 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2484 strange for a machine that supports C.
2486 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2488 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2489 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2491 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2493 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2494 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2497 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2499 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2500 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2502 =item $* is no longer supported
2504 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2505 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2506 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2507 matching within a string.
2509 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2510 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2511 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2512 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2514 =item $# is no longer supported
2516 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2517 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2518 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2520 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2522 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2523 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2524 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2526 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2528 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2531 =item junk on end of regexp
2533 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2535 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2537 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2538 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2541 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2543 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2544 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2547 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2549 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2550 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2553 =item leaving effective %s failed
2555 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2556 effective uids or gids failed.
2558 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2560 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2561 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2562 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2564 =item length() used on %s
2566 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2567 probably wanted a count of the items.
2569 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2573 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2577 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2579 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2580 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2581 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2582 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2583 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2585 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2587 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2590 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2592 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2593 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2596 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2598 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2599 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2600 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2602 =item localtime(%f) too large
2604 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2605 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2606 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2607 not-a-number value).
2609 =item localtime(%f) too small
2611 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2612 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2615 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2617 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2618 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2620 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2622 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2623 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2624 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2625 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2626 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2627 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2629 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2631 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2632 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2633 instead on the filehandle.)
2635 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2637 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2638 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2639 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2640 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2641 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2642 if you really know what you are doing.
2644 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2646 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2647 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2648 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2649 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2650 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2652 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2654 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2656 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2657 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2659 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2661 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2662 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2664 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2666 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2673 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2674 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2675 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2676 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2678 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2680 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2681 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2682 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2683 when the function is called.
2685 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2687 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2688 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2690 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2691 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2692 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2694 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2695 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2696 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2699 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2701 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2703 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2705 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2707 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2708 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2710 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2712 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2713 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2715 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2717 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2718 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2720 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2722 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2723 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2725 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2727 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2728 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2729 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2732 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2734 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2735 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2736 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2737 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2738 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2740 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2742 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2743 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2746 =item '%' may not be used in pack
2748 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2749 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2750 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2752 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2754 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2755 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2757 =item Method %s not permitted
2761 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2763 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2764 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2765 ended earlier on the current line.
2767 =item Misplaced _ in number
2769 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2770 separate two digits.
2772 =item Missing argument in %s
2774 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2777 =item Missing argument to -%c
2779 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2780 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2782 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2784 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2785 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2786 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2787 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2790 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2792 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2794 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2796 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2797 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2799 =item Missing command in piped open
2801 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2802 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2805 =item Missing control char name in \c
2807 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2810 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2812 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2813 they have a name with which they can be found.
2815 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2817 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2818 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2819 can vary from one line to the next.
2821 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2823 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2824 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2826 =item Missing right brace on %s
2828 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2830 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2832 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2834 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2835 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2836 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2837 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2838 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2840 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2841 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2842 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2844 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2845 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2846 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2847 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2848 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2849 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2851 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2852 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2853 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2854 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2856 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2858 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2859 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2862 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2864 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2865 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2866 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2868 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2870 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2871 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2872 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2874 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2877 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2879 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2880 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2883 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2884 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
2887 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2889 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2890 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2893 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2895 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2896 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2898 =item Module name must be constant
2900 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2902 =item Module name required with -%c option
2904 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2905 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2906 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2908 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2910 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2911 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2912 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2913 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2915 =item msg%s not implemented
2917 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2919 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2921 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2922 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2924 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2926 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2927 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2928 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2930 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2932 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2935 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2937 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2938 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2939 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2941 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2943 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2944 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2945 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2946 provided for this purpose.
2948 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2949 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2950 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2951 will not trigger this warning.
2953 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2955 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2956 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
2957 its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
2960 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2962 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
2963 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
2964 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
2965 backslash in double-quotish:
2967 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2968 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2971 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2973 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2976 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2980 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2982 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2983 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2985 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2986 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2988 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2991 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2993 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2994 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2996 =item Negative length
2998 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2999 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3001 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3003 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3004 greater than or equal to zero.
3006 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3008 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3009 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the
3010 regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3012 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3013 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3015 =item %s never introduced
3017 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3018 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3020 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3022 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3023 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3026 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3028 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3029 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3030 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3031 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3033 =item No code specified for -%c
3035 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3036 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3037 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3043 =item No comma allowed after %s
3045 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3046 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3047 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3049 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3050 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3051 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3052 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3053 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3054 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3055 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3056 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3057 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3058 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3059 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3061 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3063 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3064 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3065 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3067 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3069 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3070 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3071 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3074 =item No dbm on this machine
3076 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3077 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3079 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3081 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3082 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3083 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3084 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3086 =item No directory specified for -I
3088 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3089 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3091 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3093 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3094 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3095 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3097 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3099 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3100 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3102 =item No input file after < on command line
3104 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3105 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3106 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3108 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3110 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3111 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3112 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3113 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3115 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3117 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3118 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3120 =item No output file after > on command line
3122 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3123 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3124 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3126 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3128 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3129 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3130 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3132 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3134 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3135 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3136 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3138 =item No Perl script found in input
3140 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3141 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3143 =item No setregid available
3145 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3148 =item No setreuid available
3150 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3153 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3155 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3156 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3157 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3160 =item No such class %s
3162 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3163 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3165 =item No such hook: %s
3167 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3168 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3170 =item No such pipe open
3172 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3173 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3174 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3176 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3178 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3179 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3180 names on your system.
3182 =item Not a CODE reference
3184 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3185 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3186 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3189 =item Not a format reference
3191 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3192 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3194 =item Not a GLOB reference
3196 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3197 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3198 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3199 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3201 =item Not a HASH reference
3203 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3204 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3205 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3207 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3209 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3210 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3211 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3213 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3215 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3216 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3217 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3219 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3221 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3222 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3223 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3225 =item Not a subroutine reference
3227 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3228 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3229 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3232 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3234 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3235 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3237 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3239 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3241 =item Not enough format arguments
3243 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3244 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3248 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3249 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3252 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3254 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3255 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3256 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3257 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3258 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3260 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3262 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3263 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3266 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3268 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3269 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3270 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3272 =item Null filename used
3274 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3275 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3277 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3279 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3282 =item Null picture in formline
3284 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3285 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3286 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3290 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3292 =item NULL regexp argument
3294 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3296 =item NULL regexp parameter
3298 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3300 =item Number too long
3302 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3303 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3304 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3305 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3308 =item Number with no digits
3310 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3311 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3314 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3316 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3317 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3318 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3320 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3322 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3323 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3325 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3327 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3328 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3330 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3332 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3333 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3335 =item Offset outside string
3337 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3338 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3339 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3340 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3341 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3342 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3345 =item %s() on unopened %s
3347 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3348 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3349 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3351 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3353 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3354 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3358 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3362 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3364 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3366 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3367 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3368 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3371 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3373 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3374 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3375 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3378 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3380 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3381 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3382 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3383 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3385 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3387 (W utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3388 semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do
3389 is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3391 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3392 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3394 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3395 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3397 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3399 (W utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3400 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
3401 surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics
3402 are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do
3403 nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be
3404 dangerous, Perl warns.
3406 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3407 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3409 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3410 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3412 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3414 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3415 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3416 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3417 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3420 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3422 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3423 in the current lexical scope.
3425 =item Out of memory!
3427 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3428 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3429 no option but to exit immediately.
3431 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3432 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3433 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3434 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3435 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3437 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3439 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3440 the largest possible memory allocation.
3442 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3444 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3445 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3446 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3447 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3449 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3451 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3452 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3455 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3456 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3457 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3458 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3459 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3460 where the failed request happened.
3462 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3464 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3465 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3466 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3468 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3470 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3471 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3474 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3476 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3477 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3479 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3481 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3482 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3484 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3486 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3487 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3488 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3490 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3492 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3493 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3495 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3497 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3498 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3501 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3503 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3504 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3506 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3508 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3509 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3510 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3511 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3513 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3515 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3516 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3520 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3521 page. See L<perlform>.
3525 (P) An internal error.
3527 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3529 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3530 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3531 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3532 enter this branch on this platform.
3534 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3536 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3538 =item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3540 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3542 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3544 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3545 there are in the savestack.
3547 =item panic: del_backref
3549 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3554 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3555 it wasn't an eval context.
3557 =item panic: do_subst
3559 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3562 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3564 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3567 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3569 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3574 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3576 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3578 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3579 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3581 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3583 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3584 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3585 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3586 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3588 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3590 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3592 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3594 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3596 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3598 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3600 =item panic: last, type=%u
3602 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3603 it wasn't a block context.
3605 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3607 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3610 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3612 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3613 invalid enum on the top of it.
3615 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3617 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3618 references to an object.
3620 =item panic: malloc, %s
3622 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3624 =item panic: memory wrap
3626 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3628 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3630 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3631 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3633 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3635 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3636 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3638 =item panic: pad_free po
3640 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3642 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
3644 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3645 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3647 =item panic: pad_sv po
3649 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3651 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
3653 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3654 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3656 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3658 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3660 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
3662 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3664 =item panic: pp_match%s
3666 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3669 =item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
3671 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3673 =item panic: realloc, %s
3675 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3677 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
3679 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
3680 reference count other than 1.
3682 =item panic: restartop in %s
3684 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3685 didn't supply the destination.
3687 =item panic: return, type=%u
3689 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3690 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3692 =item panic: scan_num, %s
3694 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3696 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3698 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3699 scalar's string buffer.
3701 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
3703 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3706 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
3708 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
3709 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab" is
3710 shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
3712 =item panic: top_env
3714 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3716 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3718 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3719 permitted at run time.
3721 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3723 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3724 to even) byte length.
3726 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3728 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3729 to even) byte length.
3731 =item panic: yylex, %s
3733 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3735 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3737 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3740 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3742 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3743 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
3744 the nesting limit is exceeded.
3746 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3749 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3751 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3757 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3759 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3761 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3763 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3764 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3765 redirected it with select().)
3767 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3769 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3770 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3771 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3773 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%x; please use the perlbug utility to report
3775 (W regex, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3776 case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3777 built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This may
3778 lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3779 "perlbug" utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3780 default will be turned-on.)
3782 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3784 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3785 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3786 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3787 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3789 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
3791 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
3792 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
3793 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
3794 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
3795 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
3796 is equivalent to v5.100.
3798 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3800 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3801 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3802 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3804 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3806 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3807 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3809 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3811 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3813 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
3815 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
3816 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
3817 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
3818 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
3820 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3822 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3824 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3825 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3828 are supported and installed on your system.
3829 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3831 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3832 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3833 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3834 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3835 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3836 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3837 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
3838 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
3839 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3840 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3842 =item pid %x not a child
3844 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3845 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3846 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3848 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3850 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3852 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3854 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3855 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3856 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3857 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3858 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3860 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3862 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3863 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3865 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3867 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3868 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3869 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3870 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3871 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3872 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3874 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3876 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3877 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3878 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3879 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3880 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3881 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3883 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3885 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3886 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3887 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3888 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3889 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3890 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3892 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3894 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3895 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3896 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3897 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3899 You probably wrote something like this:
3906 when you should have written this:
3913 If you really want comments, build your list the
3914 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3918 'b', # another comment
3921 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3923 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3924 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3925 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3928 You probably wrote something like this:
3932 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3933 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3937 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3939 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3940 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3941 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3942 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3944 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3946 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3947 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3949 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3951 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3952 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3953 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3954 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3956 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3958 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3959 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3960 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3961 followed by the word 'bar'.
3963 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3964 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3966 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3967 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3968 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3970 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3972 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
3973 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3974 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3975 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3977 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3979 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3983 is now misinterpreted as
3987 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3988 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3989 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3992 =item Premature end of script headers
3996 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3998 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3999 before now. Check your control flow.
4001 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
4003 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4004 before now. Check your control flow.
4006 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
4008 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4009 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4010 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4011 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4014 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4016 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4017 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4019 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4021 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4022 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4024 =item Prototype not terminated
4026 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4029 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4031 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4032 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4033 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4034 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4035 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4037 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4038 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4041 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4042 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4043 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4044 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4045 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4046 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4047 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4048 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4049 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4050 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4051 change when upper cased.
4053 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4055 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4056 you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4057 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4059 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4061 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4062 the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4063 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4065 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4067 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4068 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4069 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4070 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4071 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4073 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4076 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4078 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4079 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4080 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4081 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4083 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4085 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4086 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4088 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4090 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4091 before now. Check your control flow.
4093 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4095 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4097 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4099 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4101 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4103 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4105 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4107 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4110 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4112 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4113 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4114 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4116 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4118 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4119 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4120 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4121 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4123 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4125 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4126 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4127 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4129 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4131 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4133 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4135 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4136 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4138 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4140 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4141 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4142 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4143 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4145 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4146 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4147 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4148 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4150 =item Reference is already weak
4152 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4153 Doing so has no effect.
4155 =item Reference to invalid group 0
4157 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4158 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4159 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4160 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4162 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4164 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4165 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4166 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4167 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4169 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4172 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4174 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4175 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4176 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4177 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4179 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4182 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4184 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4185 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4186 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4188 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4191 =item regexp memory corruption
4193 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4194 expression compiler gave it.
4196 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4198 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4200 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4201 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4203 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-"
4205 (F regexp) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning
4206 on another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4207 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4208 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4210 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4212 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4213 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4214 supposed to be there.
4216 =item Regexp out of space
4218 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4221 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4223 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4224 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4225 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4227 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4229 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4230 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4233 =item Reversed %s= operator
4235 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4236 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4238 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4240 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4241 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4243 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4245 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4246 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4247 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4248 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4250 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4252 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4253 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4254 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4255 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4256 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4257 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4258 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4260 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4261 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4262 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4265 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4267 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4268 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4269 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4270 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4271 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4272 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4273 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4275 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4276 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4277 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4280 =item Search pattern not terminated
4282 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4283 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4284 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4286 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4287 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4288 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4289 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4291 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4293 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4296 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4297 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4298 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4299 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4301 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4303 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4304 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4306 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4308 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4309 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4311 =item select not implemented
4313 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4315 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4317 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4318 the current implementation.
4320 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4322 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4323 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4325 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4327 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4328 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4330 =item sem%s not implemented
4332 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4334 =item send() on closed socket %s
4336 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4337 before now. Check your control flow.
4339 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4341 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4342 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4343 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4345 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4347 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4348 but has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4349 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4351 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4353 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4354 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4355 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4356 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4357 redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4358 causes, see L<perlre>.
4360 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4362 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4363 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4365 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4367 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4368 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4369 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4372 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4374 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contain braces, they
4375 must balance for Perl to detect the end of the clause properly.
4376 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4377 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4379 =item Z<>500 Server error
4385 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4386 when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4387 actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4388 frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4389 not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4390 headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4392 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4394 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4395 the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4396 user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4397 variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4398 in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4399 less. Please see the following for more information:
4401 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4402 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4403 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4405 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4407 =item setegid() not implemented
4409 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4410 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4413 =item seteuid() not implemented
4415 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4416 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4419 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4421 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4422 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4425 =item setrgid() not implemented
4427 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4428 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4431 =item setruid() not implemented
4433 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4434 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4437 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4439 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4440 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4441 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4443 =item shm%s not implemented
4445 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4447 =item !=~ should be !~
4449 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4450 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4451 operators: probably not what you intended.
4453 =item <> should be quotes
4455 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4458 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4460 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4461 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4462 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4463 probably not what you had in mind.
4465 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4467 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4470 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4472 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4473 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4475 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4477 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4478 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4481 =item sort is now a reserved word
4483 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4484 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4486 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4488 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4489 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4491 =item Source filters apply only to byte streams
4493 (F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
4494 source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
4495 not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
4496 C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
4498 =item splice() offset past end of array
4500 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4501 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
4502 end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
4503 try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
4504 See L<perlfunc/splice>.
4508 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4509 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4510 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4512 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4514 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4515 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4516 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4517 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4520 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4522 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4523 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4524 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4526 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4528 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4529 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4531 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4533 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4534 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4535 C<can> may break this.
4537 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4539 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4542 no warnings 'redefine';
4543 eval "sub name { ... }";
4546 =item Substitution loop
4548 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4549 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4550 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4551 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4553 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4555 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4556 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4557 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4559 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4561 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4562 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4563 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4565 =item substr outside of string
4567 (W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4568 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4569 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4570 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4571 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4573 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4575 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4576 inferior to its current type.
4578 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4580 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
4581 two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or
4582 both to contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose
4583 it in clustering parentheses:
4585 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4587 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4588 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4590 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4592 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4593 a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4594 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4596 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4598 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4599 and effective uids or gids.
4603 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4607 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4609 A keyword is misspelled.
4610 A semicolon is missing.
4612 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4613 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4614 A closing quote is missing.
4616 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4617 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4618 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4619 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4620 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4621 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4622 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4623 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4624 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
4626 =item syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
4628 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4629 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4632 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4634 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4635 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4636 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4638 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4640 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4642 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4644 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4646 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4648 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4649 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4650 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4651 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4653 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4655 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4656 before now. Check your control flow.
4658 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4660 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4661 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4663 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4665 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4666 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4668 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4670 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4671 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4673 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4675 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4676 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4678 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4680 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4681 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4690 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4691 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[> and L<arybase>.
4693 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4695 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4696 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4697 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4698 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4701 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4703 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4704 to the probings of Configure.
4706 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4708 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4709 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4710 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4713 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4715 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4717 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4719 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4721 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4722 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4723 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4724 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4725 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4726 target of the change to
4727 %ENV which produced the warning.
4729 =item thread failed to start: %s
4731 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4733 =item times not implemented
4735 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4736 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4738 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4740 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains
4741 the B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with
4742 B<-T> in its command line. This is an error because, by the time
4743 Perl discovers a B<-T> in a script, it's too late to properly taint
4744 everything from the environment. So Perl gives up.
4746 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4747 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be
4748 fixed by editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of
4749 Perl's first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4751 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4752 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4754 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4756 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4757 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4758 specified an illegal mapping.
4759 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4761 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4763 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4765 =item Too few args to syscall
4767 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4768 system call to call, silly dilly.
4770 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4772 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4773 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4775 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options
4776 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4778 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as
4779 well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either
4780 specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports
4781 it, make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing
4784 =item Too late to run %s block
4786 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4787 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4788 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4789 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4792 =item Too many args to syscall
4794 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4796 =item Too many arguments for %s
4798 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4802 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4803 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4807 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4808 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4810 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4812 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4813 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4815 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4817 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4818 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4819 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4821 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4823 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4824 y/// or y[][] construct.
4826 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4828 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4829 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4831 =item truncate not implemented
4833 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4834 Configure knows about.
4836 =item Type of arg %d to &CORE::%s must be %s
4838 (F) The subroutine in question in the CORE package requires its argument
4839 to be a hard reference to data of the specified type. Overloading is
4840 ignored, so a reference to an object that is not the specified type, but
4841 nonetheless has overloading to handle it, will still not be accepted.
4843 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4845 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4846 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4847 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4848 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4850 =item Type of argument to %s must be unblessed hashref or arrayref
4852 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with a scalar argument that
4853 was not a reference to an unblessed hash or array.
4855 =item umask not implemented
4857 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4858 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4860 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4862 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4864 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4866 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4867 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4869 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4871 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4872 many values were temporarily localized.
4874 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4876 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4877 many blocks were entered and left.
4879 =item Unbalanced string table refcount: (%d) for "%s"
4881 (W internal) On exit, Perl found some strings remaining in the shared
4882 string table used for copy on write and for hash keys. The entries
4883 should have been freed, so this indicates a bug somewhere.
4885 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4887 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4888 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4890 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4892 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4893 another package? See L<perlform>.
4895 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4897 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4898 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4900 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4902 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4903 since been undefined.
4905 =item Undefined subroutine called
4907 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4908 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4910 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4912 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4913 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4915 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4917 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4918 another package? See L<perlform>.
4920 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4922 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4923 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4926 =item %s: Undefined variable
4928 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4929 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4931 =item Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through
4933 (D) You used a literal C<"{"> character in a regular expression pattern.
4934 You should change to use C<"\{"> instead, because a future version of
4935 Perl (tentatively v5.20) will consider this to be a syntax error. If
4936 the pattern delimiters are also braces, any matching right brace
4937 (C<"}">) should also be escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for
4942 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4944 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4945 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4947 =item Unexpected constant lvalue entersub entry via type/targ %d:%d
4949 (P) When compiling a subroutine call in lvalue context, Perl failed an
4950 internal consistency check. It encountered a malformed op tree.
4952 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4954 (W utf8, nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are
4955 defined by the Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are
4956 legal codepoints, but are reserved for internal use; so, applications
4957 shouldn't attempt to exchange them. If you know what you are doing
4958 you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'nonchar';>.
4960 =item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
4962 (W utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
4963 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
4964 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
4965 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
4966 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
4967 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
4968 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
4969 off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
4971 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4973 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4978 (P) Perl was about to print an error message in C<$@>, but the C<$@> variable
4979 did not exist, even after an attempt to create it.
4981 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4983 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4984 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4985 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4987 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4989 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4990 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4991 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4992 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4993 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4994 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4996 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4998 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4999 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
5000 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
5001 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
5003 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
5005 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
5007 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5009 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
5010 is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
5012 (1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
5013 (<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
5014 (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
5015 (?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
5016 (?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
5017 (R) true if evaluating inside recursion
5018 (R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
5019 (R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
5020 (DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
5022 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
5023 discovered. See L<perlre>.
5025 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
5027 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5028 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5030 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
5032 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5033 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5035 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5037 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
5038 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
5039 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
5041 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
5043 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
5044 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
5046 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
5047 module (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have loaded this
5050 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5052 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
5053 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
5054 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
5055 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5057 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5059 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
5060 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
5061 the matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
5062 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5064 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
5066 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
5067 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
5068 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
5069 you were last editing.
5071 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
5073 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
5074 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
5075 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
5078 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
5080 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
5081 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
5082 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
5084 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5086 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5087 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
5088 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
5089 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
5090 escape was discovered.
5092 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
5094 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5095 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
5096 change in a future version of Perl.
5098 =item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5100 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5101 recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but
5102 this may change in a future version of Perl. The <-- HERE shows in
5103 the regular expression about where the escape was discovered.
5105 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
5107 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
5108 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
5111 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
5113 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
5114 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
5115 bad switch on your behalf.)
5117 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
5119 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
5120 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
5121 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
5123 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
5125 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
5127 =item Unsupported function %s
5129 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
5130 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
5132 =item Unsupported function fork
5134 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
5136 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
5137 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
5138 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
5140 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
5142 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
5143 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
5145 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
5147 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
5148 least that's what Configure thought.
5150 =item Unterminated attribute list
5152 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
5153 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
5154 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
5155 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
5157 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
5159 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
5160 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
5161 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
5162 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
5164 =item Unterminated compressed integer
5166 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
5167 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
5168 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5170 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5172 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
5173 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
5175 =item Unterminated <> operator
5177 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
5178 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
5179 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
5180 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
5182 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5184 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
5185 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
5187 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5189 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
5190 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
5192 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
5194 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
5195 still valid when C<untie> was called.
5197 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
5199 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
5200 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
5202 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
5204 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
5205 See L<Win32> for more information.
5207 =item $[ used in %s (did you mean $] ?)
5209 (W syntax) You used C<$[> in a comparison, such as:
5215 You probably meant to use C<$]> instead. C<$[> is the base for indexing
5216 arrays. C<$]> is the Perl version number in decimal.
5218 =item Useless assignment to a temporary
5220 (W misc) You assigned to an lvalue subroutine, but what
5221 the subroutine returned was a temporary scalar about to
5222 be discarded, so the assignment had no effect.
5224 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5226 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
5227 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
5229 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
5233 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
5235 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
5236 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5238 =item Useless localization of %s
5240 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is legal,
5241 but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
5242 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
5244 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5246 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
5247 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
5249 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
5253 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
5255 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
5256 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5258 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
5260 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
5261 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
5262 about the /d modifier.
5264 =item Useless use of \E
5266 (W misc) You have a \E in a double-quotish string without a C<\U>,
5267 C<\L> or C<\Q> preceding it.
5269 =item Useless use of %s in void context
5271 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
5272 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
5273 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
5274 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
5275 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
5276 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
5281 when you meant to say
5283 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
5285 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
5286 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
5291 when you should have said
5295 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
5296 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
5297 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
5298 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
5299 L<perlref> for more on this.
5301 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
5302 since they are often used in statements like
5304 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
5306 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
5309 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
5311 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
5313 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
5315 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
5319 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
5321 =item Useless use of %s with no values
5323 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
5324 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
5325 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
5326 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
5327 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
5328 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
5330 =item "use" not allowed in expression
5332 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
5333 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
5335 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
5337 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
5338 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
5340 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
5342 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
5343 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
5345 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
5347 (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
5348 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
5350 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
5352 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
5353 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
5354 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
5357 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
5358 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
5360 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
5362 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
5363 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
5365 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
5367 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
5368 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
5369 used. (This may change in the future.)
5371 =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
5373 (F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
5374 C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
5375 This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
5376 error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
5378 If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
5379 a space before the C<=>.
5381 =item Use of freed value in iteration
5383 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
5384 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
5387 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
5389 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
5390 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
5391 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
5392 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
5394 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
5396 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
5397 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
5399 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
5401 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
5402 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
5403 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
5405 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
5407 (D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
5408 scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
5410 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
5412 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD>
5413 subroutines are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy)
5414 even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain
5415 functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or
5416 C<< $obj->bar() >>).
5418 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
5419 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
5420 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
5421 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
5424 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
5425 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
5426 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
5427 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
5430 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
5431 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
5432 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
5434 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
5436 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
5437 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
5439 =item Use of %s is deprecated
5441 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
5442 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
5443 old way has bad side effects.
5445 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
5447 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
5448 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
5449 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
5451 =item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
5453 (D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that scalar
5454 happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will be tied. If
5455 you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in C<tie *$handle>.
5457 This was a long-standing bug that was removed in Perl 5.16, as there was
5458 no way to tie the scalar itself when it held a typeglob, and no way to
5459 untie a scalar that had had a typeglob assigned to it. If you see this
5460 message, you must be using an older version.
5462 =item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
5464 (D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
5465 expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
5466 the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
5467 will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
5468 instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
5469 still invokes match-once behaviour.
5471 =item Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated
5473 (D deprecated) You have something like C<foreach $x qw(a b c) {...}>,
5474 using a C<qw(...)> list literal where a parenthesised expression is
5475 expected. Historically the parser fooled itself into thinking that
5476 C<qw(...)> literals were always enclosed in parentheses, and as a result
5477 you could sometimes omit parentheses around them. (You could never do
5478 the C<foreach qw(a b c) {...}> that you might have expected, though.)
5479 The parser no longer lies to itself in this way. Wrap the list literal
5480 in parentheses, like C<foreach $x (qw(a b c)) {...}>.
5482 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
5484 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5485 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5486 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5488 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5489 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5490 however, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5491 operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
5493 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
5495 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
5496 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
5497 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
5498 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
5499 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
5500 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
5502 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
5504 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
5505 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
5506 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
5507 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
5509 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
5511 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
5512 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
5513 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
5515 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you
5516 the name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases
5517 it cannot do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the
5518 undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program
5519 anid the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear
5520 literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually
5521 optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the
5522 C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in
5525 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
5527 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
5528 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
5529 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now
5530 deprecated, and will be removed in a future version.
5532 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
5534 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
5535 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
5536 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated,
5537 and will be removed in a future version.
5539 =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class
5541 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one character.
5542 Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in a regular
5543 expression pattern bracketed character class.
5545 =item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
5547 (F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
5548 currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
5549 been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
5550 modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
5552 =item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
5554 (W utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5555 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5556 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5557 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5558 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5559 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5560 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5561 off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
5563 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
5565 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
5566 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
5567 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
5568 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
5569 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
5570 C<defined> operator.
5572 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
5574 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
5575 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
5576 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
5579 =item Variable "%s" is not available
5581 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5582 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
5583 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
5584 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
5585 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
5586 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5588 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
5590 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
5591 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
5592 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
5593 now been created and is live:
5595 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
5597 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
5598 gone out of scope, for example,
5606 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
5607 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
5609 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
5611 (W misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
5612 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
5613 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
5614 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
5615 front of your variable.
5617 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
5619 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
5620 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
5622 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5624 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the
5625 current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the
5626 previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note
5627 that the earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope
5628 or until all closure referents to it are destroyed.
5630 =item Variable syntax
5632 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
5633 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
5636 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
5638 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
5639 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
5641 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
5642 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
5643 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
5644 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
5645 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
5646 variable will no longer be shared.
5648 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
5649 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
5650 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
5651 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
5653 =item vector argument not supported with alpha versions
5655 (W internal) The %vd (s)printf format does not support version objects
5658 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5660 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an
5661 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5663 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5665 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
5666 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5668 =item Version number must be a constant number
5670 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
5671 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
5674 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
5676 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
5679 =item Warning: something's wrong
5681 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
5682 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
5684 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
5686 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
5687 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
5690 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
5692 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
5693 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
5694 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
5695 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
5699 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
5703 but in actual fact, you got
5707 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
5709 =item Wide character in %s
5711 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
5712 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
5713 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
5714 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
5715 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5716 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5717 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5719 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5721 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]>
5722 only if C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that
5723 can be determined from the template alone. This is not possible if
5724 it contains any of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign
5727 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5729 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5730 before now. Check your control flow.
5732 =item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
5734 (F) When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5735 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5736 this encoding, for example
5738 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5740 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5742 =item 'X' outside of string
5744 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5745 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5747 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5749 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5750 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5752 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5754 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5755 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5756 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5759 =item You need to quote "%s"
5761 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5762 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5763 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5764 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5765 what you want, put an & in front.)
5767 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5769 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5770 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5771 Something Very Wrong.
5777 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>, L<diagnostics>.