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1=head1 NAME
2
3perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
4
5=head1 DESCRIPTION
6
7These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
8desperation):
9
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (optional).
e476b1b5 12 (S) A severe warning (default).
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13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
54310121 15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
cb1a09d0 16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
a0d0e21e 17
75b44862 18The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
64977eb6 19(W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
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20
21If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22category is included with the classification letter in the description
23below.
24
25Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
29
30Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
4438c4b7 32
748a9306 33Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
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34L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
36See L<warnings>.
a0d0e21e 37
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38The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
43letter.
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44
45=over 4
46
6df41af2 47=item accept() on closed socket %s
33633739 48
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49(W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50to check the return value of your socket() call? See
51L<perlfunc/accept>.
33633739 52
6df41af2 53=item Allocation too large: %lx
a0d0e21e 54
6df41af2 55(X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
a0d0e21e 56
1109a392 57=item '%c' allowed only after types %s
ef54e1a4 58
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59(F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
ef54e1a4 61
6df41af2 62=item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
43192e07 63
75b44862 64(W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
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65keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67subroutine is not imported.
43192e07 68
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69To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
43192e07 73
6df41af2 74To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
496a33f5 75on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
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76to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
77L<attributes>).
43192e07 78
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79=item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
80
81(F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
85
6df41af2 86=item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
43192e07 87
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88(W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
a0d0e21e 91
6df41af2 92=item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
a0d0e21e 93
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94(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
c9f97d15 97
6df41af2 98=item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
1028017a 99
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100(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
1028017a 105
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106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
107 while (<STDIN>) {
108 print;
109 print OUT;
110 }
111 close OUT;
c9f97d15 112
6df41af2 113=item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
eb6e2d6f 114
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115(W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
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117one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
121alternatives.
eb6e2d6f 122
6df41af2 123=item Args must match #! line
a0d0e21e 124
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125(F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
a0d0e21e 129
6df41af2 130=item Arg too short for msgsnd
76cd736e 131
6df41af2 132(F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
76cd736e 133
8ea97a1e 134=item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
a0d0e21e 135
8ea97a1e 136(F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
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137
138 $foo{$bar}
cb4f522a 139 $ref->{"susie"}[12]
a0d0e21e 140
8ea97a1e 141=item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
5f05dabc 142
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143(F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
144such as:
5f05dabc 145
146 $foo{$bar}
cb4f522a 147 $ref->{"susie"}[12]
5f05dabc 148
8ea97a1e 149or a hash or array slice, such as:
5f05dabc 150
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151 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
152 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
5315574d 153
6df41af2 154=item %s argument is not a subroutine name
a0d0e21e 155
6df41af2 156(F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
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157name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
158error.
a0d0e21e 159
f86702cc 160=item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
a0d0e21e 161
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162(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
163that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
164will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
a0d0e21e 165
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166=item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
167
168(W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
169forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
170data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
171the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
172If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
173the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
174
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175=item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
176
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177(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
178spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
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179
180=item assertion botched: %s
181
182(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
183
184=item Assertion failed: file "%s"
185
186(P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
187
188=item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
189
190(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
191must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
192know which context to supply to the right side.
193
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194=item A thread exited while %d threads were running
195
4447dfc1 196(W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
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197thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
198Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
199created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
200thread. See L<threads>.
201
2393f1b9 202=item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
1b1f1335 203
49293501 204(F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
2393f1b9 205the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
49293501 206
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207=item Attempt to bless into a reference
208
209(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
210the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
211supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
212
213 bless $self, $proto;
214
215when you intended
216
217 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
218
219If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
220of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
221example by:
222
223 bless $self, "$proto";
224
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225=item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
226
227(F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
228which is not in its key set.
229
230=item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
231
232(F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
233declared readonly from a restricted hash.
234
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235=item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
236
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237(P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
238that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
239outside any of those arenas.
a0d0e21e 240
54310121 241=item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
bbce6d69 242
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243(P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
244strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
245strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
246of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
bbce6d69 247
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248=item Attempt to free temp prematurely
249
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250(W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
251free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
252SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
253free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
254try to free it.
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255
256=item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
257
e476b1b5 258(P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
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259
260=item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
261
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262(W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
263see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
264earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
265This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
266that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
267mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
268corrupted.
a0d0e21e 269
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270=item Attempt to join self
271
272(F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
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273impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
274to move the join() to some other thread.
dcdda58d 275
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276=item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
277
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278(W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
279function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
280means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
281invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
282literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
283avoid this warning.
84902520 284
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285=item Attempt to set length of freed array
286
287(W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
288can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
289of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
290
291 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
292 $$r = 503
293
b7a902f4 294=item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
295
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296(W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
297used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
298dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
b7a902f4 299
dc26df50 300=item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
a0d0e21e 301
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302(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
303or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
5f05dabc 304S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
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305S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
306
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307=item Bad evalled substitution pattern
308
496a33f5 309(F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
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310substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
311most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
312
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313=item Bad filehandle: %s
314
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315(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
316symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
317open(), or did it in another package.
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318
319=item Bad free() ignored
320
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321(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
322been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
9ea8bc6d 323setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
33c8a3fe 324
9ea8bc6d 325This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
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326dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
327which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
a0d0e21e 328
aa689395 329=item Bad hash
330
331(P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
332
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333=item Badly placed ()'s
334
335(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
336of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
337Perl yourself.
338
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339=item Bad name after %s::
340
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341(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
342didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
343of quotes, so
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344
345 $var = 'myvar';
346 $sym = mypack::$var;
347
348is not the same as
349
350 $var = 'myvar';
351 $sym = "mypack::$var";
352
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353=item Bad realloc() ignored
354
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355(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
356never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
357by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
4ad56ec9 358
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359=item Bad symbol for array
360
361(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
362wasn't a symbol table entry.
363
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364=item Bad symbol for dirhandle
365
366(P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
367that wasn't a symbol table entry.
368
369
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370=item Bad symbol for filehandle
371
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372(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
373that wasn't a symbol table entry.
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374
375=item Bad symbol for hash
376
377(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
378wasn't a symbol table entry.
379
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380=item Bareword found in conditional
381
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382(W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
383conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
384of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
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385
386 open FOO || die;
387
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388It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
389a bareword:
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390
391 use constant TYPO => 1;
392 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
393
394The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
395
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396=item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
397
398(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
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399subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
400symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
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401
402=item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
403
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404(W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
405compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
406you need to predeclare a package?
6df41af2 407
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408=item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
409
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410(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
411subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
412exited.
a0d0e21e 413
68dc0745 414=item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
415
416(F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
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417implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
418occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
419be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
420depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
68dc0745 421
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422=item \1 better written as $1
423
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424(W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
425The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
426substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
427because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
428there are more than 9 backreferences.
6df41af2 429
252aa082
JH
430=item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
431
e476b1b5 432(W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
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JH
433(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
434L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
252aa082 435
69282e91 436=item bind() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 437
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438(W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
439check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
a0d0e21e 440
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441=item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
442
443(W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
444Check you control flow and number of arguments.
445
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446=item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
447
e476b1b5 448(W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
c5a0f51a 449
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LW
450=item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
451
be771a83 452(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
b45f050a 453copyable.
4633a7c4 454
f675dbe5
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455=item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
456
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457(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
458iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
459which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
f675dbe5 460
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461=item Callback called exit
462
4929bf7b 463(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
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464exited by calling exit.
465
6df41af2 466=item %s() called too early to check prototype
f675dbe5 467
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468(W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
469parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
470that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
471early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
472subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
473checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
474function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
475the warning. See L<perlsub>.
f675dbe5 476
49704364 477=item Cannot compress integer in pack
0258719b
NC
478
479(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
480compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
481attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
482See L<perlfunc/pack>.
483
49704364 484=item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
0258719b
NC
485
486(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
487format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
488
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489=item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
490
491(F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
492then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
493triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
494from that type of reference to a typeglob.
495
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496=item Cannot copy to %s in %s
497
498(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
499be directly assigned not.
500
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501=item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
502
503(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
504integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
505to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
506
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507=item Can't bless non-reference value
508
509(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
510encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
511
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512=item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
513
0d863452
RH
514(F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
515a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
516
517=item Can't "break" outside a given block
dc57907a 518
0d863452
RH
519(F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
520
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521=item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
522
523(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
524functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
525in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
526
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527=item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
528
529(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
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530object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
531like this will reproduce the error:
6df41af2
GS
532
533 $BADREF = undef;
534 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
535 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
536
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537=item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
538
54310121 539(F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
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540ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
541didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
542object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
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543
544=item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
545
546(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
be771a83
GS
547object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
548defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
72b5445b
GS
549Something like this will reproduce the error:
550
551 $BADREF = 42;
552 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
553 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
554
a0d0e21e
LW
555=item Can't chdir to %s
556
557(F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
558that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
559
0545a864 560=item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
104d25b7 561
be771a83
GS
562(P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
563nosuid.
104d25b7 564
6df41af2
GS
565=item Can't coerce array into hash
566
567(F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
568information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
569only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
570
a0d0e21e
LW
571=item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
572
573(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 574(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
a0d0e21e
LW
575say things like:
576
577 *foo += 1;
578
579You CAN say
580
581 $foo = *foo;
582 $foo += 1;
583
584but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
585
586=item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
587
588(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 589(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
a0d0e21e
LW
590
591=item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
592
593(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 594(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
a0d0e21e 595
0d863452 596=item Can't "continue" outside a when block
dc57907a 597
0d863452
RH
598(F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
599or C<default> block.
600
a0d0e21e
LW
601=item Can't create pipe mailbox
602
be771a83
GS
603(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
604quotas or other plumbing problems.
a0d0e21e 605
eb64745e 606=item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
a0d0e21e 607
2f7e735d
AMS
608(F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
609class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
610extended for other types of variables in future.
eb64745e
GS
611
612=item Can't declare %s in "%s"
613
614(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
615"our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
a0d0e21e 616
6df41af2
GS
617=item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
618
be771a83
GS
619(S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
620a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
6df41af2 621
a0d0e21e
LW
622=item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
623
be771a83
GS
624(S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
625reason.
a0d0e21e 626
54310121 627=item Can't do inplace edit without backup
a0d0e21e 628
be771a83
GS
629(F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
630reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
631C<-i.bak>, or some such.
a0d0e21e 632
10f9c03d 633=item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
a0d0e21e 634
e476b1b5 635(S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
10f9c03d
CK
636characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
637inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
a0d0e21e 638
7253e4e3 639=item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
a0d0e21e 640
b45f050a 641(F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
7253e4e3 642regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
b45f050a 643regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e
LW
644
645=item Can't do setegid!
646
be771a83
GS
647(P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
648suidperl.
a0d0e21e
LW
649
650=item Can't do seteuid!
651
652(P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
653
654=item Can't do setuid
655
be771a83
GS
656(F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
657setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
658sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
659the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
660file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
661sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
a0d0e21e
LW
662
663=item Can't do waitpid with flags
664
be771a83
GS
665(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
666waitpid() without flags is emulated.
a0d0e21e 667
a0d0e21e
LW
668=item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
669
be771a83
GS
670(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
671point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
672line.
a0d0e21e 673
1109a392
MHM
674=item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
675
676(F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
677or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
678little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
679See L<perlfunc/pack>.
680
a0d0e21e
LW
681=item Can't exec "%s": %s
682
d1be9408 683(W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
be771a83
GS
684named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
685permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
686C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
687architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
688can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
689#! at all.)
a0d0e21e
LW
690
691=item Can't exec %s
692
be771a83
GS
693(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
694that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
695need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
a0d0e21e
LW
696
697=item Can't execute %s
698
be771a83
GS
699(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
700found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
2a92aaa0 701
6df41af2 702=item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
2a92aaa0 703
be771a83
GS
704(F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
705is no builtin with the name C<word>.
6df41af2 706
56ca2fc0
JH
707=item Can't find %s character property "%s"
708
709(F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
89d60977 710could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
56ca2fc0
JH
711(remember that the names of character properties consist only of
712alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
713
6df41af2
GS
714=item Can't find label %s
715
be771a83
GS
716(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
717possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2a92aaa0
GS
718
719=item Can't find %s on PATH
720
be771a83
GS
721(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
722found in the PATH.
a0d0e21e 723
6df41af2 724=item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
a0d0e21e 725
be771a83
GS
726(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
727found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
728script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
a0d0e21e
LW
729
730=item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
731
be771a83
GS
732(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
733that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
734nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
a0d0e21e 735
fb73857a 736 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
737
be771a83
GS
738If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
739unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
740editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
a0d0e21e 741
660a4616
TS
742=item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
743
744(F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
745example C<\p{Lu}> is all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
746Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
747If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
748by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
749possible C<\E>).
750
a0d0e21e
LW
751=item Can't fork
752
be771a83
GS
753(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
754pipeline.
a0d0e21e 755
748a9306
LW
756=item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
757
be771a83
GS
758(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
759between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
760Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
761the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
762account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
763the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
764the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
765the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
766if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
767because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
768appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
769and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
770routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
771shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
772only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
748a9306 773
a0d0e21e
LW
774=item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
775
be771a83
GS
776(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
777pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
a0d0e21e
LW
778
779=item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
780
748a9306
LW
781(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
782mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
a0d0e21e 783
6df41af2 784=item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
a0d0e21e 785
be771a83
GS
786(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
787loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
6df41af2
GS
788
789=item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
790
be771a83
GS
791(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
792a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
793you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
794See L<perlfunc/goto>.
a0d0e21e 795
9850bf21 796=item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
cd299c6e 797
9850bf21
RH
798(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
799comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
800as the reduce() function in List::Util).
801
c74ace89 802=item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
b150fb22 803
be771a83 804(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
c74ace89 805"string" or block.
b150fb22 806
6df41af2
GS
807=item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
808
be771a83
GS
809(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
810subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
811cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
812routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
6df41af2 813
0b5b802d
GS
814=item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
815
be771a83
GS
816(W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
817signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
818signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
819processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
820situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
821may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
0b5b802d 822
6df41af2 823=item Can't "last" outside a loop block
4633a7c4 824
6df41af2 825(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
be771a83
GS
826except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
827block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
828block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
829usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
830inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
831L<perlfunc/last>.
4633a7c4 832
b8170e59
JB
833=item Can't load '%s' for module %s
834
835(F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
836may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
837incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
838between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
16d98ec5 839extension was built against an older version of the library that is
b8170e59
JB
840installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
841extensions.
842
748a9306
LW
843=item Can't localize lexical variable %s
844
2ba9eb46 845(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
748a9306
LW
846lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
847localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
848package name.
849
6df41af2 850=item Can't localize through a reference
4727527e 851
6df41af2
GS
852(F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
853handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
be771a83 854pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
64977eb6 855that $ref will still be a reference.
4727527e 856
ea071790 857=item Can't locate %s
ec889f3a
GS
858
859(F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
860found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
be771a83
GS
861unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
862need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
863the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
864to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
865L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
a0d0e21e 866
6df41af2
GS
867=item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
868
be771a83
GS
869(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
870autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
871are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
872the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
6df41af2 873
b8170e59
JB
874=item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
875
876(F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
877for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
878unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
879
a0d0e21e
LW
880=item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
881
882(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
883functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
2ba9eb46 884method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
a0d0e21e
LW
885
886=item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
887
be771a83
GS
888(W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
889doesn't seem to exist.
a0d0e21e 890
2f7da168
RK
891=item Can't locate PerlIO%s
892
893(F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
894e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
895
3e3baf6d
TB
896=item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
897
be771a83
GS
898(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
899VMS.
3e3baf6d 900
a0d0e21e
LW
901=item Can't modify %s in %s
902
be771a83
GS
903(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
904to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
a0d0e21e 905
54310121 906=item Can't modify nonexistent substring
a0d0e21e
LW
907
908(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
909a NULL.
910
6df41af2
GS
911=item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
912
913(F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
914such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
915
5f05dabc 916=item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
a0d0e21e 917
5f05dabc 918(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
a0d0e21e
LW
919buffer.
920
6df41af2
GS
921=item Can't "next" outside a loop block
922
923(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
924there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
be771a83
GS
925count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
926grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
927though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
928once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
6df41af2 929
a0d0e21e
LW
930=item Can't open %s: %s
931
c47ff5f1 932(S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
08e9d68e
DD
933filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
934switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
be771a83
GS
935is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
936the command line.
a0d0e21e 937
9a869a14
RGS
938=item Can't open a reference
939
940(W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
941using the 3-arg open() syntax :
942
943 open FH, '>', $ref;
944
945but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
946open is not supported.
947
a0d0e21e
LW
948=item Can't open bidirectional pipe
949
be771a83
GS
950(W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
951You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
952as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
953">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
a0d0e21e 954
748a9306
LW
955=item Can't open error file %s as stderr
956
be771a83
GS
957(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
958redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
959the command line for writing.
748a9306
LW
960
961=item Can't open input file %s as stdin
962
be771a83
GS
963(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
964redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
965command line for reading.
748a9306
LW
966
967=item Can't open output file %s as stdout
968
be771a83
GS
969(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
970redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
971the command line for writing.
748a9306
LW
972
973=item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
974
be771a83
GS
975(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
976redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
977for stdout.
748a9306 978
2b8ca739 979=item Can't open perl script%s
a0d0e21e
LW
980
981(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
982
fa3aa65a
JC
983If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
984shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
985you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
986
6df41af2
GS
987=item Can't read CRTL environ
988
989(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
990from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
991missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
be771a83
GS
992or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
993searched.
6df41af2 994
6df41af2
GS
995=item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
996
997(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
998there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
999count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1000or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1001though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1002loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1003
64977eb6 1004=item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
10f9c03d 1005
be771a83
GS
1006(S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1007file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1008the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
10f9c03d 1009
a0d0e21e
LW
1010=item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1011
e476b1b5 1012(S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
10f9c03d 1013probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
a0d0e21e 1014
748a9306
LW
1015=item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1016
be771a83
GS
1017(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1018to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
748a9306 1019
6df41af2
GS
1020=item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
1021
be771a83
GS
1022(F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1023to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1024method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
6df41af2 1025
a0d0e21e
LW
1026=item Can't reswap uid and euid
1027
be771a83
GS
1028(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1029suidperl.
a0d0e21e 1030
cd06dffe
GS
1031=item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1032
be771a83
GS
1033(F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1034temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1035is not allowed.
cd06dffe 1036
96ebfdd7
RK
1037=item Can't return outside a subroutine
1038
1039(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1040there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1041
78f9721b
SM
1042=item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1043
1044(F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1045but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1046to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1047the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1048list context.
1049
a0d0e21e
LW
1050=item Can't stat script "%s"
1051
be771a83
GS
1052(P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1053open already. Bizarre.
a0d0e21e
LW
1054
1055=item Can't swap uid and euid
1056
be771a83
GS
1057(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1058suidperl.
a0d0e21e
LW
1059
1060=item Can't take log of %g
1061
fb73857a 1062(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1063negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
be771a83
GS
1064standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1065negative numbers.
a0d0e21e
LW
1066
1067=item Can't take sqrt of %g
1068
1069(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
fb73857a 1070negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1071with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
a0d0e21e
LW
1072
1073=item Can't undef active subroutine
1074
1075(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1076however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1077redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1078
1079=item Can't unshift
1080
1081(F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1082as the main Perl stack.
1083
c81225bc 1084=item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
a0d0e21e 1085
be771a83
GS
1086(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1087into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1088specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1089indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
a0d0e21e 1090
1db89ea5
BS
1091=item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1092
e27ad1f2 1093(F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1db89ea5
BS
1094table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1095for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1096
96ebfdd7
RK
1097=item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1098
1099(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1100be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1101
6df41af2
GS
1102=item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1103
be771a83
GS
1104(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1105references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
6df41af2 1106
90b75b61 1107=item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1d2dff63
GS
1108
1109(F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1110Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1111provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1112
1109a392
MHM
1113=item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1114
1115(F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1116byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1117allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1118
6df41af2
GS
1119=item Can't use %s for loop variable
1120
be771a83
GS
1121(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1122foreach.
6df41af2
GS
1123
1124=item Can't use global %s in "my"
1125
be771a83
GS
1126(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1127is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1128(namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1129have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
6df41af2
GS
1130weren't.
1131
6d3b25aa
RGS
1132=item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1133
1134(F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1135that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1136For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1137is inside a big-endian group.
1138
c07a80fd 1139=item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1140
1141(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
c47ff5f1 1142You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
c07a80fd 1143and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1144Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1145lexical variable.
1146
a0d0e21e
LW
1147=item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1148
1149(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1150reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1151test the type of the reference, if need be.
1152
748a9306 1153=item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
a0d0e21e 1154
be771a83
GS
1155(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1156references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e 1157
748a9306
LW
1158=item Can't use subscript on %s
1159
1160(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1161subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
209e7cf1 1162didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
748a9306 1163
6df41af2
GS
1164=item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1165
75b44862
GS
1166(W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1167creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1168backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
be771a83
GS
1169expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1170value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1171instead.
6df41af2 1172
0d863452 1173=item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
dc57907a 1174
0d863452
RH
1175(F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1176loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1177from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1178or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1179
810b8aa5
GS
1180=item Can't weaken a nonreference
1181
1182(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1183references can be weakened.
1184
5f05dabc 1185=item Can't x= to read-only value
a0d0e21e 1186
be771a83
GS
1187(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1188with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
a0d0e21e
LW
1189Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1190
f337b084 1191=item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
ac7cd81a
SC
1192
1193(W pack) You said
1194
1195 pack("C", $x)
1196
1197where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1198only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1199and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1200
1201 pack("C", $x & 255)
1202
1203If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1204instead.
1205
f337b084
TH
1206=item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1207
1208(W pack) You said
1209
1210 pack("U0W", $x)
1211
1212where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1213all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1214meant:
1215
1216 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1217
1218=item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
ac7cd81a
SC
1219
1220(W pack) You said
1221
1222 pack("c", $x)
1223
1224where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1225is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1226and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1227
1228 pack("c", $x & 255);
1229
1230If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1231instead.
1232
f337b084
TH
1233=item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1234
1235(W unpack) You tried something like
1236
1237 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1238
1a147d38 1239where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
f337b084
TH
1240below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1241modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1242
1243 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1244
1245=item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1246
1247(W pack) You tried something like
1248
1249 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1250
1a147d38
YO
1251where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1252value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
f337b084
TH
1253uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1254
1255 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1256
1257=item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1258
1259(W unpack) You tried something like
1260
1261 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1262
1a147d38
YO
1263where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1264value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
f337b084
TH
1265uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1266
1267 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1268
96ebfdd7
RK
1269=item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1270
1271(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1272
abc7ecad
SP
1273=item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1274
1275(W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1276a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1277
49704364
WL
1278=item Code missing after '/'
1279
1280(F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1281template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1282
6df41af2
GS
1283=item %s: Command not found
1284
be771a83
GS
1285(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1286Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
6df41af2 1287
7a2e2cd6 1288=item Compilation failed in require
1289
1290(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
be771a83
GS
1291Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1292encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
7a2e2cd6 1293
c3464db5
DD
1294=item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1295
be771a83
GS
1296(W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1297situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1298to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1299arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1300recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1301under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1302in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
c2e66d9e 1303that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
be771a83 1304on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
c3464db5 1305
38875929
DM
1306=item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1307
1308(W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1309cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1310function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1311cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1312has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1313first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1314after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1315lock.
1316
38875929
DM
1317=item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1318
1319(W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1320cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1321function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1322cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1323has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1324first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1325after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1326lock.
1327
69282e91 1328=item connect() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 1329
be771a83
GS
1330(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1331to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1332L<perlfunc/connect>.
a0d0e21e 1333
41ab332f 1334=item Constant(%s)%s: %s
6df41af2 1335
be771a83
GS
1336(F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1337an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1338specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1339corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1340L<overload>.
6df41af2 1341
fc8cd66c
YO
1342=item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1343
1a147d38
YO
1344(F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1345the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1346forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
fc8cd66c
YO
1347See L<charnames>.
1348
1349
779c5bc9
GS
1350=item Constant is not %s reference
1351
1352(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
be771a83
GS
1353is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1354The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1355usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
779c5bc9
GS
1356See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1357
4cee8e80
CS
1358=item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1359
bb028877 1360(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
be771a83
GS
1361eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1362commentary and workarounds.
4cee8e80 1363
9607fc9c 1364=item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1365
be771a83
GS
1366(W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1367for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1368workarounds.
9607fc9c 1369
e7ea3e70
IZ
1370=item Copy method did not return a reference
1371
64977eb6 1372(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
13a2d996 1373L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
e7ea3e70 1374
6798c92b
GS
1375=item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1376
1377(F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1378
a0d0e21e
LW
1379=item corrupted regexp pointers
1380
1381(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1382expression compiler gave it.
1383
1384=item corrupted regexp program
1385
be771a83
GS
1386(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1387valid magic number.
a0d0e21e 1388
6df41af2
GS
1389=item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1390
1391(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1392
49704364
WL
1393=item Count after length/code in unpack
1394
1395(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1396you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1397L<perlfunc/pack>.
1398
a0d0e21e
LW
1399=item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1400
be771a83
GS
1401(W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1402100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1403infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1404which case it indicates something else.
a0d0e21e 1405
f10b0346 1406=item defined(@array) is deprecated
69794302 1407
be771a83
GS
1408(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1409checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
64977eb6 1410array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
69794302 1411
f10b0346 1412=item defined(%hash) is deprecated
69794302 1413
be771a83
GS
1414(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1415checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
64977eb6 1416is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
69794302 1417
62658f4d
PM
1418=item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1419
1420(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1421there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1422
fc36a67e 1423=item Delimiter for here document is too long
1424
be771a83
GS
1425(F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1426long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1427that triggers this error.
fc36a67e 1428
6d3b25aa
RGS
1429=item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1430
1431(D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1432There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1433not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1434conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1435static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1436relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1437declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
36fb85f3 1438
6d3b25aa
RGS
1439 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1440
1441becomes
1442
1443 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1444
36fb85f3
RGS
1445Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1446have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1447
1448 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1449
500ab966
RGS
1450=item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1451
1452(F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1453just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1454to create a dangling reference.
1455
3cdd684c
TP
1456=item Did not produce a valid header
1457
1458See Server error.
1459
6df41af2
GS
1460=item %s did not return a true value
1461
1462(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1463it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1464traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1465do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1466
cc507455 1467=item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
4633a7c4 1468
be771a83
GS
1469(W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1470such.
4633a7c4 1471
cc507455 1472=item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
33633739 1473
be771a83
GS
1474(W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1475variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1476seems superfluous.
33633739 1477
cc507455 1478=item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
a0d0e21e 1479
be771a83
GS
1480(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1481@hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1482carried away.
748a9306 1483
7e1af8bc 1484=item Died
5f05dabc 1485
1486(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1487you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1488
3cdd684c
TP
1489=item Document contains no data
1490
1491See Server error.
1492
62658f4d
PM
1493=item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1494
1495(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1496define a C<$VERSION.>
1497
49704364
WL
1498=item '/' does not take a repeat count
1499
1500(F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1501See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1502
a0d0e21e
LW
1503=item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1504
1505(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1506
1507=item do_study: out of memory
1508
1509(P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1510
6df41af2
GS
1511=item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1512
56da5a46
RGS
1513(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1514"%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
6df41af2
GS
1515name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1516because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
be771a83
GS
1517"sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1518something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1519subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1520"sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
6df41af2 1521
ac206dc8
RGS
1522=item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1523
1524(W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1525qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1526
84d78eb7
YO
1527=item dump is not supported
1528
1529(F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1530
a0d0e21e
LW
1531=item Duplicate free() ignored
1532
be771a83
GS
1533(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1534already been freed.
a0d0e21e 1535
1109a392
MHM
1536=item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1537
1538(W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1539in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1540
4633a7c4
LW
1541=item elseif should be elsif
1542
56da5a46
RGS
1543(S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1544ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
be771a83 1545"elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
4633a7c4
LW
1546unlikely to be what you want.
1547
ab13f0c7
JH
1548=item Empty %s
1549
af6f566e
HS
1550(F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1551described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1552a regular expression without specifying the property name.
ab13f0c7 1553
85ab1d1d 1554=item entering effective %s failed
5ff3f7a4 1555
85ab1d1d 1556(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
5ff3f7a4
GS
1557effective uids or gids failed.
1558
c038024b
RGS
1559=item %ENV is aliased to %s
1560
1561(F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1562aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1563program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1564
748a9306
LW
1565=item Error converting file specification %s
1566
5f05dabc 1567(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
748a9306 1568specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
be771a83
GS
1569single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1570an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1571conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
748a9306 1572
e4d48cc9
GS
1573=item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1574
be771a83
GS
1575(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1576expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1577is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
e4d48cc9 1578
e4d48cc9
GS
1579=item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1580
be771a83
GS
1581(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1582C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1583pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1584is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1585building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1586that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
e4d48cc9 1587
6df41af2
GS
1588=item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1589
be771a83
GS
1590(F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1591assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1592pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
6df41af2 1593
1a147d38
YO
1594=item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1595
1596(F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1597any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1598
1599The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1600discovered.
1601
fc36a67e 1602=item Excessively long <> operator
1603
1604(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1605Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1606filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1607variable and glob that.
1608
ed9aa3b7
SG
1609=item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1610
1611(F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1612
f86702cc 1613=item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
a0d0e21e
LW
1614
1615(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1616
1617=item Exiting eval via %s
1618
be771a83
GS
1619(W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1620goto, or a loop control statement.
e476b1b5
GS
1621
1622=item Exiting format via %s
1623
9a2ff54b 1624(W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
be771a83 1625goto, or a loop control statement.
a0d0e21e 1626
0a753a76 1627=item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1628
be771a83
GS
1629(W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1630sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1631loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
0a753a76 1632
a0d0e21e
LW
1633=item Exiting subroutine via %s
1634
be771a83
GS
1635(W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1636as a goto, or a loop control statement.
a0d0e21e
LW
1637
1638=item Exiting substitution via %s
1639
be771a83
GS
1640(W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1641as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
a0d0e21e 1642
7b8d334a
GS
1643=item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1644
be771a83
GS
1645(W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1646the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1647usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1648e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
7b8d334a 1649
6df41af2
GS
1650=item %s: Expression syntax
1651
be771a83
GS
1652(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1653Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
6df41af2
GS
1654
1655=item %s failed--call queue aborted
1656
3c10abe3
AG
1657(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1658CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1659queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
6df41af2 1660
7253e4e3 1661=item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
73b437c8 1662
be771a83 1663(W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
7253e4e3
RK
1664character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1665in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1666"-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1667problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
73b437c8 1668
748a9306 1669=item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
a0d0e21e 1670
be771a83
GS
1671(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1672system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1673details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1674you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
a0d0e21e
LW
1675
1676=item fcntl is not implemented
1677
1678(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1679PDP-11 or something?
1680
f337b084
TH
1681=item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1682
1683(W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1684which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1685a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1686C<u63> as format.
1687
af8c498a 1688=item Filehandle %s opened only for input
a0d0e21e 1689
6c8d78fb
HS
1690(W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1691it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1692"+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1693write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
a0d0e21e 1694
af8c498a 1695=item Filehandle %s opened only for output
a0d0e21e 1696
6c8d78fb
HS
1697(W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1698you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
be771a83
GS
1699with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1700intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
6c8d78fb
HS
1701Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1702(also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
97828cef
RGS
1703
1704=item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1705
1706(W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
d7f8936a 1707as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
97828cef
RGS
1708previously.
1709
1710=item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1711
1712(W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
d7f8936a 1713as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
a0d0e21e
LW
1714
1715=item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1716
1717(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
be771a83
GS
1718a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1719happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1720name.
a0d0e21e 1721
56e90b21
GS
1722=item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1723
be771a83 1724(W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
c289d2f7 1725some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
be771a83
GS
1726filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1727same name?
56e90b21 1728
6df41af2
GS
1729=item Format not terminated
1730
1731(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1732to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1733
a0d0e21e
LW
1734=item Format %s redefined
1735
e476b1b5 1736(W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
a0d0e21e
LW
1737
1738 {
271595cc 1739 no warnings 'redefine';
a0d0e21e
LW
1740 eval "format NAME =...";
1741 }
1742
a0d0e21e
LW
1743=item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1744
e476b1b5 1745(W syntax) You said
a0d0e21e
LW
1746
1747 if ($foo = 123)
1748
1749when you meant
1750
1751 if ($foo == 123)
1752
1753(or something like that).
1754
6df41af2
GS
1755=item %s found where operator expected
1756
56da5a46
RGS
1757(S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1758If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
be771a83
GS
1759operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1760operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
6df41af2 1761
a0d0e21e
LW
1762=item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1763
1764(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1765
1766=item gethostent not implemented
1767
1768(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1769because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1770on the Internet.
1771
69282e91 1772=item get%sname() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 1773
be771a83
GS
1774(W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1775socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
a0d0e21e 1776
748a9306
LW
1777=item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1778
1779(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1780C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1781
6df41af2
GS
1782=item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1783
be771a83
GS
1784(W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1785forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
6df41af2
GS
1786L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1787
1788=item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1789
1790(F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1791must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1792"our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1793is in (using "::").
1794
e476b1b5
GS
1795=item glob failed (%s)
1796
be771a83
GS
1797(W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1798C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1799C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1800nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1801resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1802broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1803config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1804were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1805empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1806think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
75b44862 1807C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
e476b1b5 1808
a0d0e21e
LW
1809=item Glob not terminated
1810
1811(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
be771a83
GS
1812a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1813not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1814earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
a0d0e21e 1815
6df41af2 1816=item Got an error from DosAllocMem
a0d0e21e 1817
6df41af2
GS
1818(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1819version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
a0d0e21e
LW
1820
1821=item goto must have label
1822
1823(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1824unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1825
49704364 1826=item ()-group starts with a count
18529408 1827
49704364 1828(F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
18529408 1829supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
49704364 1830 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
18529408 1831
6df41af2
GS
1832=item %s had compilation errors
1833
1834(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1835
a0d0e21e
LW
1836=item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1837
be771a83
GS
1838(S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1839to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1840created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
a0d0e21e
LW
1841
1842=item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1843
be771a83
GS
1844(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1845spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
a0d0e21e 1846
6df41af2
GS
1847=item %s has too many errors
1848
1849(F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1850Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1851
252aa082
JH
1852=item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1853
e476b1b5 1854(W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
9e24b6e2
JH
1855(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1856L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
252aa082 1857
8903cb82 1858=item Identifier too long
1859
1860(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
fc36a67e 1861about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
be771a83
GS
1862names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1863of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
8903cb82 1864
fc8cd66c
YO
1865=item Ignoring %s in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1866
1867(W) Named unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return multi-char
1868or zero length sequences. When such an escape is used in a character class
1a147d38 1869its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
fc8cd66c
YO
1870been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
1871
6df41af2 1872=item Illegal binary digit %s
f675dbe5 1873
6df41af2 1874(F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
f675dbe5 1875
6df41af2 1876=item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
a0d0e21e 1877
be771a83
GS
1878(W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1879binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1880offending digit.
a0d0e21e 1881
4fdae800 1882=item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1883
d5898338 1884(F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
be771a83
GS
1885would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1886when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1887version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1888to your Perl administrator.
4fdae800 1889
d37a9538
ST
1890=item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1891
420cdfc1 1892(W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
d37a9538
ST
1893characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1894
904d85c5
RGS
1895=item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1896
1897(F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1898you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1899
8e742a20
MHM
1900=item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
1901
1902(F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
1903
a0d0e21e
LW
1904=item Illegal division by zero
1905
be771a83
GS
1906(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1907your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1908meaningless input.
a0d0e21e 1909
6df41af2
GS
1910=item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1911
be771a83
GS
1912(W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1913A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1914number stopped before the illegal character.
6df41af2 1915
a0d0e21e
LW
1916=item Illegal modulus zero
1917
be771a83
GS
1918(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1919numbers don't take to this kindly.
a0d0e21e 1920
6df41af2 1921=item Illegal number of bits in vec
399388f4 1922
6df41af2
GS
1923(F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1924two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
399388f4
GS
1925
1926=item Illegal octal digit %s
a0d0e21e 1927
d1be9408 1928(F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
a0d0e21e 1929
399388f4 1930=item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
748a9306 1931
d1be9408 1932(W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
75b44862 1933Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
748a9306 1934
6df41af2 1935=item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
6ff81951 1936
6df41af2 1937(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
e4af53b0 1938following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtwA]>.
6ff81951 1939
6df41af2 1940=item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
81e118e0 1941
75b44862 1942(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
be771a83
GS
1943internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1944delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
09bef843 1945
6df41af2 1946=item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
54310121 1947
be771a83
GS
1948(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1949name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1950didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1951ignored.
54310121 1952
8fa7688f
SF
1953=item Impossible to activate assertion call
1954
1955(W assertions) You're calling an assertion function in a block that is
1956not under the control of the C<assertions> pragma.
1957
6df41af2 1958=item (in cleanup) %s
9607fc9c 1959
be771a83
GS
1960(W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1961the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1962system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1963times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1964would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
6df41af2 1965
be771a83
GS
1966Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1967also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
9607fc9c 1968
979699d9
JH
1969=item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1970
1971(F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1972Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1973encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1974
1a147d38
YO
1975=item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1976
1977(F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
1978text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
1979either consume text or fail.
1980
1981The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1982discovered.
1983
a0d0e21e
LW
1984=item Insecure dependency in %s
1985
8b1a09fc 1986(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
be771a83
GS
1987The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1988setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1989tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1990from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1991such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1992L<perlsec> for more information.
a0d0e21e
LW
1993
1994=item Insecure directory in %s
1995
be771a83
GS
1996(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1997setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
df98f984
RGS
1998the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
1999See L<perlsec>.
a0d0e21e 2000
62f468fc 2001=item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
a0d0e21e
LW
2002
2003(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
62f468fc 2004setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
332d5f78
SR
2005C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2006supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2007the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
a0d0e21e 2008
a7ae9550
GS
2009=item Integer overflow in %s number
2010
75b44862 2011(W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
be771a83
GS
2012either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2013your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2014On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
9e24b6e2
JH
2015representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
20160b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2017transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2018internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2019operations.
bbce6d69 2020
2fba7546
GA
2021=item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2022
0be96356
AL
2023(F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2024or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2fba7546
GA
2025integers for your architecture.
2026
46314c13
JP
2027=item Integer overflow in version
2028
2029(F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2030size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2031because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2032element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2033trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2034100/9.
2035
7253e4e3 2036=item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
6df41af2
GS
2037
2038(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
7253e4e3 2039The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
b45f050a
JF
2040discovered.
2041
748a9306
LW
2042=item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2043
be771a83
GS
2044(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2045you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2046to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2047L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2048Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2049terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
748a9306 2050
7253e4e3 2051=item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
b45f050a 2052
7253e4e3
RK
2053(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2054<-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2055discovered.
a0d0e21e 2056
6df41af2
GS
2057=item %s (...) interpreted as function
2058
75b44862 2059(W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
be771a83 2060followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
64977eb6 2061operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
13a2d996 2062L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
6df41af2 2063
09bef843
SB
2064=item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2065
2066The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2067by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2068
2069=item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2070
be771a83
GS
2071The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2072recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
09bef843 2073
c635e13b 2074=item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2075
be771a83
GS
2076(W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2077L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
c635e13b 2078
9e08bc66
TS
2079=item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2080
2081(W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2082didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2083from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2084The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2085The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2086escape was discovered.
2087
7253e4e3 2088=item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
6df41af2
GS
2089
2090(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
7253e4e3
RK
2091greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2092C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2093up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2094problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
6df41af2 2095
d1573ac7 2096=item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
c2e66d9e
GS
2097
2098(F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2099character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2100
09bef843
SB
2101=item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2102
0120eecf 2103(F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
be771a83
GS
2104elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2105parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2106See L<attributes>.
09bef843 2107
b4581f09
JH
2108=item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2109
2110(W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2111colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2112If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2113list was terminated too soon.
2114
49704364 2115=item Invalid type '%s' in %s
96e4d5b1 2116
49704364
WL
2117(F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2118See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2119(W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
75b44862 2120silently ignored.
96e4d5b1 2121
46314c13
JP
2122=item Invalid version format (multiple underscores)
2123
2124(F) Versions may contain at most a single underscore, which signals
2125that the version is a beta release. See L<version> for the allowed
2126version formats.
2127
2128=item Invalid version format (underscores before decimal)
2129
2130(F) Versions may not contain decimals after the optional underscore.
2131See L<version> for the allowed version formats.
2132
a0d0e21e
LW
2133=item ioctl is not implemented
2134
2135(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2136strange for a machine that supports C.
2137
c289d2f7
JH
2138=item ioctl() on unopened %s
2139
2140(W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2141Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2142
363c40c4
SB
2143=item IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
2144
2145(F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2146you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2147with 'useperlio'.
2148
80cbd5ad
JH
2149=item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2150
2151(F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2152neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2153
b4581f09
JH
2154=item $* is no longer supported
2155
2156(D deprecated) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2157been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2158C<//m> and C<//s> regexp modifiers instead.
2159
8ae1fe26
RGS
2160=item $# is no longer supported
2161
2162(D deprecated) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2163been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2164printf/sprintf functions instead.
2165
6ad11d81
JH
2166=item `%s' is not a code reference
2167
04a80ee0
RGS
2168(W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2169needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
6ad11d81
JH
2170to a subroutine.
2171
2172=item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2173
04a80ee0
RGS
2174(W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2175unaware of.
6ad11d81 2176
a0d0e21e
LW
2177=item junk on end of regexp
2178
2179(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2180
2181=item Label not found for "last %s"
2182
be771a83
GS
2183(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2184of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2185L<perlfunc/last>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2186
2187=item Label not found for "next %s"
2188
2189(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2190that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2191L<perlfunc/last>.
2192
2193=item Label not found for "redo %s"
2194
2195(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2196that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2197L<perlfunc/last>.
2198
85ab1d1d 2199=item leaving effective %s failed
5ff3f7a4 2200
85ab1d1d 2201(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
5ff3f7a4
GS
2202effective uids or gids failed.
2203
49704364
WL
2204=item length/code after end of string in unpack
2205
d7f8936a 2206(F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
49704364
WL
2207length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2208an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2209
69282e91 2210=item listen() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 2211
be771a83
GS
2212(W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2213to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2214L<perlfunc/listen>.
a0d0e21e 2215
58e23c8d 2216=item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
b45f050a
JF
2217
2218(F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
58e23c8d 2219handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2e50fd82 2220
2f7da168
RK
2221=item lstat() on filehandle %s
2222
2223(W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2224by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2225instead on the filehandle.)
2226
96ebfdd7
RK
2227=item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2228
2229(F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2230values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2231L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2232
49704364
WL
2233=item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2234
2235(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2236are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2237
2238=item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2239
2240(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2241are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2242
6df41af2
GS
2243=item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2244
2245(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2246
2247 prefix1;prefix2
2248
2249or
6df41af2
GS
2250 prefix1 prefix2
2251
be771a83
GS
2252with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2253a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2254appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
fecfaeb8 2255"PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
6df41af2 2256
2f758a16
ST
2257=item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2258
d37a9538
ST
2259(F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2260syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2261obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2262when the function is called.
2f758a16 2263
ba210ebe
JH
2264=item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2265
2575c402
JW
2266(S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2267encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
ba210ebe 2268
2575c402
JW
2269One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2270you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
22718-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2272
2273If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2274sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2275set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2276message.
2277
2278See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
901b21bf 2279
dea0fc0b
JH
2280=item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2281
2282Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2283doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2284
f337b084
TH
2285=item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2286
2287(F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2288rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2289
2290=item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2291
2292(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2293rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2294
2295=item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2296
2297(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2298rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2299
2563cec5
IZ
2300=item Maximal count of pending signals (%s) exceeded
2301
2302(F) Perl aborted due to a too important number of signals pending. This
2303usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2304too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2305resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2306safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2307
49704364 2308=item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
6df41af2
GS
2309
2310(W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
7253e4e3
RK
2311regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2312shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2313See L<perlre>.
6df41af2 2314
25f58aea
PN
2315=item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2316
2317(W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2318interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2319"use" or "my".
2320
49704364 2321=item % may not be used in pack
6df41af2
GS
2322
2323(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
be771a83
GS
2324checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2325See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
6df41af2 2326
a0d0e21e
LW
2327=item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2328
2329(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
e7ea3e70 2330doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 2331
3cdd684c
TP
2332=item Method %s not permitted
2333
2334See Server error.
2335
a0d0e21e
LW
2336=item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2337
2338(S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2339by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2340ended earlier on the current line.
2341
2342=item Misplaced _ in number
2343
d4ced10d
JH
2344(W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2345separate two digits.
a0d0e21e 2346
9e81e6a1
RGS
2347=item Missing argument to -%c
2348
2349(F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2350immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2351
4a2d328f 2352=item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
423cee85 2353
4a2d328f 2354(F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
423cee85
JH
2355double-quotish context.
2356
a0d0e21e
LW
2357=item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2358
2359(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2360"indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2361
06eaf0bc
GS
2362=item Missing command in piped open
2363
be771a83
GS
2364(W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2365C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2366blank.
06eaf0bc 2367
961ce445
RGS
2368=item Missing control char name in \c
2369
2370(F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2371character name.
2372
6df41af2
GS
2373=item Missing name in "my sub"
2374
be771a83
GS
2375(F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2376they have a name with which they can be found.
6df41af2
GS
2377
2378=item Missing $ on loop variable
2379
be771a83
GS
2380(F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2381are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2382can vary from one line to the next.
6df41af2 2383
cc507455 2384=item (Missing operator before %s?)
748a9306 2385
56da5a46
RGS
2386(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2387"%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
748a9306 2388
ab13f0c7
JH
2389=item Missing right brace on %s
2390
2391(F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2392
d98d5fff 2393=item Missing right curly or square bracket
a0d0e21e 2394
be771a83
GS
2395(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2396ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2397were last editing.
a0d0e21e 2398
6df41af2
GS
2399=item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2400
56da5a46
RGS
2401(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2402"%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
6df41af2
GS
2403the previous line just because you saw this message.
2404
a0d0e21e
LW
2405=item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2406
2407(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
5f05dabc 2408constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
a0d0e21e
LW
2409catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2410
2411 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2412 mod(2);
2413
2414Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2415
c5674021
PDF
2416Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2417is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2418
2419 $x = 1;
2420 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2421 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
64977eb6 2422 }
c5674021 2423
7a4340ed 2424=item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
a0d0e21e
LW
2425
2426(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2427subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2428backwards.
2429
7a4340ed 2430=item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
a0d0e21e 2431
be771a83
GS
2432(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2433couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
a0d0e21e
LW
2434
2435=item Module name must be constant
2436
2437(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2438
be98fb35 2439=item Module name required with -%c option
6df41af2 2440
be98fb35
GS
2441(F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2442you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2443about C<-M> and C<-m>.
6df41af2 2444
ed9aa3b7
SG
2445=item More than one argument to open
2446
2447(F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2448can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2449list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2450See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2451
a0d0e21e
LW
2452=item msg%s not implemented
2453
2454(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2455
2456=item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2457
75b44862
GS
2458(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2459They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
8b1a09fc 2460
49704364 2461=item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
6df41af2 2462
49704364
WL
2463(F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2464follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2465See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6df41af2
GS
2466
2467=item "my sub" not yet implemented
2468
be771a83
GS
2469(F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2470that yet.
6df41af2
GS
2471
2472=item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2473
be771a83
GS
2474(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2475sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2476local() if you want to localize a package variable.
09bef843 2477
8b1a09fc 2478=item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2479
e476b1b5 2480(W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
be771a83
GS
2481If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2482again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
77ca0c92 2483provided for this purpose.
a0d0e21e 2484
64b374f4
FD
2485NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2486%c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2487the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2488will not trigger this warning.
2489
49704364
WL
2490=item Negative '/' count in unpack
2491
2492(F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2493negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2494
a0d0e21e
LW
2495=item Negative length
2496
be771a83
GS
2497(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2498length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
a0d0e21e 2499
ed9aa3b7
SG
2500=item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2501
2502(F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2503greater than or equal to zero.
2504
7253e4e3 2505=item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
a0d0e21e 2506
b45f050a 2507(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
7253e4e3 2508things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
b45f050a 2509expression about where the problem was discovered.
a0d0e21e 2510
7253e4e3 2511Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
be771a83 2512C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 2513
6df41af2 2514=item %s never introduced
a0d0e21e 2515
be771a83
GS
2516(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2517scope before it could possibly have been used.
a0d0e21e
LW
2518
2519=item No %s allowed while running setuid
2520
be771a83
GS
2521(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2522setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2523will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2524securable. See L<perlsec>.
a0d0e21e 2525
a0d0e21e
LW
2526=item No comma allowed after %s
2527
2528(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2529allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2530Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2531
0a753a76 2532One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2533constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2534importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2535does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2536explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2537L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2538would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2539remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2540constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2541list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2542this error was triggered?
2543
748a9306
LW
2544=item No command into which to pipe on command line
2545
be771a83
GS
2546(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2547redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2548doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
748a9306 2549
a0d0e21e
LW
2550=item No DB::DB routine defined
2551
be771a83 2552(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
ccafdc96
RGS
2553for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2554module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2555statement.
a0d0e21e
LW
2556
2557=item No dbm on this machine
2558
2559(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
5f05dabc 2560supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
a0d0e21e 2561
ccafdc96 2562=item No DB::sub routine defined
a0d0e21e 2563
ccafdc96
RGS
2564(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2565for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2566module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2567of each ordinary subroutine call.
a0d0e21e 2568
96ebfdd7
RK
2569=item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2570
2571(F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2572
c47ff5f1 2573=item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
748a9306 2574
be771a83
GS
2575(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2576redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2577find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
748a9306 2578
49704364
WL
2579=item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2580
2581(F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2582matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2583
c47ff5f1 2584=item No input file after < on command line
748a9306 2585
be771a83
GS
2586(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2587redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2588name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
748a9306 2589
6df41af2
GS
2590=item No #! line
2591
2592(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2593even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2594
2595=item "no" not allowed in expression
2596
be771a83
GS
2597(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2598returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
6df41af2 2599
c47ff5f1 2600=item No output file after > on command line
748a9306 2601
be771a83
GS
2602(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2603redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2604doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
748a9306 2605
c47ff5f1 2606=item No output file after > or >> on command line
748a9306 2607
be771a83
GS
2608(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2609redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2610find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
748a9306 2611
1ec3e8de
GS
2612=item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2613
be771a83
GS
2614(F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2615declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2616semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
1ec3e8de 2617
a0d0e21e
LW
2618=item No Perl script found in input
2619
2620(F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2621with #! and containing the word "perl".
2622
2623=item No setregid available
2624
2625(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2626your system.
2627
2628=item No setreuid available
2629
2630(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2631your system.
2632
6df41af2
GS
2633=item No %s specified for -%c
2634
2635(F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2636you haven't specified one.
2637
e75d1f10
RD
2638=item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2639
2640(F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2641but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2642package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2643
2c692339
RGS
2644=item No such class %s
2645
2646(F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2647this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2648
6df41af2
GS
2649=item No such pipe open
2650
2651(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
be771a83
GS
2652close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2653earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
6df41af2 2654
a0d0e21e
LW
2655=item No such signal: SIG%s
2656
be771a83
GS
2657(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2658not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2659names on your system.
a0d0e21e
LW
2660
2661=item Not a CODE reference
2662
2663(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2664subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
be771a83
GS
2665use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2666also L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2667
2668=item Not a format reference
2669
2670(F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2671format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2672
2673=item Not a GLOB reference
2674
be771a83
GS
2675(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2676symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2677something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2678kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2679
2680=item Not a HASH reference
2681
be771a83
GS
2682(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2683reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2684find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e 2685
6df41af2
GS
2686=item Not an ARRAY reference
2687
be771a83
GS
2688(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2689a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2690to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
6df41af2 2691
a0d0e21e
LW
2692=item Not a perl script
2693
2694(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2695even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2696mention perl.
2697
2698=item Not a SCALAR reference
2699
be771a83
GS
2700(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2701a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2702to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2703
2704=item Not a subroutine reference
2705
2706(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2707subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
be771a83
GS
2708use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2709also L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e 2710
e7ea3e70 2711=item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
a0d0e21e
LW
2712
2713(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
8b1a09fc 2714doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 2715
a0d0e21e
LW
2716=item Not enough arguments for %s
2717
2718(F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2719
6df41af2
GS
2720=item Not enough format arguments
2721
be771a83
GS
2722(W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2723supplied. See L<perlform>.
6df41af2
GS
2724
2725=item %s: not found
2726
be771a83
GS
2727(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2728of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2729yourself.
6df41af2
GS
2730
2731=item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
a0d0e21e 2732
6df41af2
GS
2733(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2734timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
be771a83
GS
2735to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2736F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2737need to be added to UTC to get local time.
a0d0e21e 2738
4ef2275c
GA
2739=item Non-string passed as bitmask
2740
2741(W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
2742Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
2743select. See L<perlfunc/select>
2744
a0d0e21e
LW
2745=item Null filename used
2746
be771a83
GS
2747(F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2748machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
a0d0e21e 2749
6df41af2
GS
2750=item NULL OP IN RUN
2751
be771a83
GS
2752(P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2753pointer.
6df41af2 2754
55497cff 2755=item Null picture in formline
2756
2757(F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2758specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2759supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2760
a0d0e21e
LW
2761=item Null realloc
2762
2763(P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2764
2765=item NULL regexp argument
2766
5f05dabc 2767(P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
a0d0e21e
LW
2768
2769=item NULL regexp parameter
2770
2771(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2772
fc36a67e 2773=item Number too long
2774
be771a83 2775(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
da75cd15 2776about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
be771a83
GS
2777versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2778the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2779"1_000_000").
fc36a67e 2780
6df41af2
GS
2781=item Octal number in vector unsupported
2782
be771a83
GS
2783(F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2784The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2785future version.
6df41af2 2786
252aa082
JH
2787=item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2788
75b44862 2789(W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
be771a83
GS
2790(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2791L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
252aa082
JH
2792
2793See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2794
6ad11d81
JH
2795=item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2796
04a80ee0
RGS
2797(W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2798arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
6ad11d81 2799
b21befc1
MG
2800=item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2801
2802(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2803which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2804
1930e939 2805=item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
a0d0e21e 2806
be771a83
GS
2807(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2808which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
a0d0e21e 2809
bbce6d69 2810=item Offset outside string
2811
42bc49da
JH
2812(F, W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
2813with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
f5a7294f
JH
2814imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
2815take place when going past the end of the string when either
2816C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
1a7a2554
MB
2817for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
2818with real files).
bbce6d69 2819
c289d2f7 2820=item %s() on unopened %s
2dd78f96
JH
2821
2822(W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2823never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2824call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2825
96ebfdd7
RK
2826=item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2827
2828(W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2829that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2830
a0d0e21e
LW
2831=item oops: oopsAV
2832
e476b1b5 2833(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
a0d0e21e
LW
2834
2835=item oops: oopsHV
2836
e476b1b5 2837(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
a0d0e21e 2838
abc718f2
RGS
2839=item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
2840
2841(W io deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
2842a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
2843Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
2844and is deprecated.
2845
2846=item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
2847
2848(W io deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
2849a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
2850Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
2851and is deprecated.
2852
a0288114 2853=item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
44a8e56a 2854
be771a83
GS
2855(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2856handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2857of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2858C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
44a8e56a 2859
748a9306
LW
2860=item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2861
be771a83
GS
2862(S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2863was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2864use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2865example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2866"*foo * 'foo'".
748a9306 2867
6df41af2
GS
2868=item "our" variable %s redeclared
2869
be771a83
GS
2870(W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2871in the current lexical scope.
6df41af2 2872
a80b8354
GS
2873=item Out of memory!
2874
2875(X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
be771a83
GS
2876remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2877no option but to exit immediately.
a80b8354 2878
19a52907
JH
2879At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
2880process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
2881C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
2882the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
2883and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
2884
6d3b25aa
RGS
2885=item Out of memory during %s extend
2886
2887(X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
2888the largest possible memory allocation.
2889
6df41af2 2890=item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
a0d0e21e 2891
6df41af2
GS
2892(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2893remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
be771a83
GS
2894the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2895possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
a0d0e21e 2896
1b979e0a 2897=item Out of memory during request for %s
a0d0e21e 2898
be771a83
GS
2899(X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2900insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2901request.
eff9c6e2
CS
2902
2903The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2904depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
be771a83
GS
2905However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2906emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
b022d2d2
IZ
2907is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2908where the failed request happened.
55497cff 2909
1b979e0a
IZ
2910=item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2911
2912(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
be771a83
GS
2913is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2914C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
1b979e0a 2915
6df41af2
GS
2916=item Out of memory for yacc stack
2917
be771a83
GS
2918(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2919parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2920otherwise.
6df41af2 2921
28be1210
TH
2922=item '.' outside of string in pack
2923
2924(F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
2925position to before the start of the packed string being built.
2926
49704364 2927=item '@' outside of string in unpack
6df41af2 2928
49704364 2929(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
6df41af2
GS
2930the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2931
f337b084
TH
2932=item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
2933
2934(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2935the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
2936UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2937
6df41af2
GS
2938=item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2939
be771a83
GS
2940(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2941package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2942some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2943mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
6df41af2 2944
96ebfdd7
RK
2945=item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
2946
2947(F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2948signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2949
a0d0e21e
LW
2950=item page overflow
2951
be771a83
GS
2952(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2953page. See L<perlform>.
a0d0e21e 2954
6df41af2
GS
2955=item panic: %s
2956
2957(P) An internal error.
2958
c99a1475
NC
2959=item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
2960
2961(P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
2962an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
2963platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
2964enter this branch on this platform.
2965
a0d0e21e
LW
2966=item panic: ck_grep
2967
2968(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2969
2970=item panic: ck_split
2971
2972(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2973
2974=item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2975
be771a83
GS
2976(P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2977there are in the savestack.
a0d0e21e 2978
810b8aa5
GS
2979=item panic: del_backref
2980
2981(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2982reference.
2983
7619c85e
RG
2984=item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
2985
2986(P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
2987last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
2988an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
2989a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
2990
a0d0e21e
LW
2991=item panic: die %s
2992
2993(P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2994it wasn't an eval context.
2995
a0d0e21e
LW
2996=item panic: do_subst
2997
be771a83
GS
2998(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2999data.
a0d0e21e 3000
2269b42e 3001=item panic: do_trans_%s
a0d0e21e 3002
2269b42e 3003(P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
be771a83 3004data.
a0d0e21e 3005
b7f7fd0b
NC
3006=item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3007
10203f38 3008(P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
b7f7fd0b
NC
3009failure was caught.
3010
c635e13b 3011=item panic: frexp
3012
3013(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3014
a0d0e21e
LW
3015=item panic: goto
3016
3017(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3018and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3019
23976bdd
NC
3020=item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3021
3022(P) The internal routine used to clear a hashes entries tried repeatedly,
3023but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3024contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3025adds a new object to the hash.
3026
a0d0e21e
LW
3027=item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3028
3029(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3030
3031=item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3032
3033(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3034
e446cec8
IZ
3035=item panic: kid popen errno read
3036
3037(F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3038
a0d0e21e
LW
3039=item panic: last
3040
3041(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3042it wasn't a block context.
3043
3044=item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3045
be771a83
GS
3046(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3047scope.
a0d0e21e
LW
3048
3049=item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3050
3051(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3052invalid enum on the top of it.
3053
810b8aa5
GS
3054=item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3055
3056(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3057references to an object.
3058
6df41af2
GS
3059=item panic: malloc
3060
3061(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3062
27d5b266
JH
3063=item panic: memory wrap
3064
3065(P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3066
a0d0e21e
LW
3067=item panic: pad_alloc
3068
3069(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3070and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3071
3072=item panic: pad_free curpad
3073
3074(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3075and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3076
3077=item panic: pad_free po
3078
3079(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3080
3081=item panic: pad_reset curpad
3082
3083(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3084and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3085
3086=item panic: pad_sv po
3087
3088(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3089
3090=item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3091
3092(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3093and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3094
3095=item panic: pad_swipe po
3096
3097(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3098
3099=item panic: pp_iter
3100
3101(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3102
96ebfdd7
RK
3103=item panic: pp_match%s
3104
3105(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3106data.
3107
2269b42e
JH
3108=item panic: pp_split
3109
3110(P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3111
a0d0e21e
LW
3112=item panic: realloc
3113
3114(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3115
3116=item panic: restartop
3117
3118(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3119didn't supply the destination.
3120
3121=item panic: return
3122
3123(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3124then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3125
3126=item panic: scan_num
3127
3128(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3129
3130=item panic: sv_insert
3131
3132(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3133was string.
3134
3135=item panic: top_env
3136
6224f72b 3137(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
a0d0e21e 3138
65bca31a
NC
3139=item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3140
3141(P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3142at run time.
3143
dea0fc0b
JH
3144=item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3145
3146(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
64977eb6 3147to even) byte length.
dea0fc0b 3148
2f7da168
RK
3149=item panic: yylex
3150
3151(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3152
1a147d38
YO
3153=item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3154
3155(F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3156consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3157nesting limit is exceeded.
3158
3159The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3160discovered.
3161
7b8d334a 3162=item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
a0d0e21e 3163
e476b1b5 3164(W parenthesis) You said something like
a0d0e21e
LW
3165
3166 my $foo, $bar = @_;
3167
3168when you meant
3169
3170 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3171
54884818 3172Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
a0d0e21e 3173
96ebfdd7
RK
3174=item C<-p> destination: %s
3175
3176(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3177command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3178redirected it with select().)
3179
3180=item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3181
3182(F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3183"Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3184that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3185
1109a392
MHM
3186=item Perl_my_%s() not available
3187
3188(F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3189so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3190conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3191'<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3192
6d3b25aa
RGS
3193=item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3194
3195(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3196recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3197you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3198
6df41af2
GS
3199=item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3200
3201(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
fecfaeb8 3202C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
6df41af2 3203
96ebfdd7
RK
3204=item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3205
3206See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3207
6df41af2
GS
3208=item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3209
3210(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3211
3212 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3213 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3214 LC_ALL = "En_US",
3215 LANG = (unset)
3216 are supported and installed on your system.
3217 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3218
3219Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3220settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
0ea6b70f
JH
3221This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3222system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3223locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3224dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3225Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3226the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3227you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3228L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
6df41af2 3229
a0d0e21e
LW
3230=item Permission denied
3231
3232(F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
3233
bd3fa61c 3234=item pid %x not a child
748a9306 3235
be771a83
GS
3236(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3237process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3238fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
748a9306 3239
49704364 3240=item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3bf38418
WL
3241
3242(F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3243
96ebfdd7
RK
3244=item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
3245
3246(F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
3247which provides a race condition that breaks security.
3248
3249=item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3250
3251(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3252shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3253Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3254the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3255not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3256
3257=item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3258
3259(F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3260the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3261
49704364 3262=item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
b45f050a 3263
9a0b3859 3264(W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
7253e4e3
RK
3265I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3266/[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3267implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3268cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3269where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
b45f050a 3270
49704364 3271=item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
b45f050a
JF
3272
3273(F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
7253e4e3
RK
3274beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3275If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3276expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3277backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3278about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
b45f050a 3279
49704364 3280=item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
b45f050a 3281
7253e4e3
RK
3282(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3283with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3284need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3285character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3286and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3287problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
b45f050a 3288
bbce6d69 3289=item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3290
e476b1b5 3291(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
75b44862 3292strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
be771a83
GS
3293literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3294parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
bbce6d69 3295
774d564b 3296You probably wrote something like this:
3297
54310121 3298 @list = qw(
774d564b 3299 a # a comment
bbce6d69 3300 b # another comment
774d564b 3301 );
bbce6d69 3302
3303when you should have written this:
3304
774d564b 3305 @list = qw(
54310121 3306 a
3307 b
774d564b 3308 );
3309
3310If you really want comments, build your list the
3311old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3312
3313 @list = (
3314 'a', # a comment
3315 'b', # another comment
3316 );
bbce6d69 3317
3318=item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3319
be771a83
GS
3320(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3321commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3322different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3323frequently used.)
bbce6d69 3324
54310121 3325You probably wrote something like this:
bbce6d69 3326
774d564b 3327 qw! a, b, c !;
3328
3329which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3330commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
bbce6d69 3331
774d564b 3332 qw! a b c !;
bbce6d69 3333
a0d0e21e
LW
3334=item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3335
3336(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3337Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3338end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3339Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3340
276b2a0c
RGS
3341=item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3342
3343(W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3344with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3345
3346 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3347
3348This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3349higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
96a925ab
YST
3350really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3351parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
276b2a0c 3352
18623440
PS
3353=item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3354
3355(W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
32b0a12e
AMS
3356but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3357literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3358to the array you apparently lost track of.
18623440 3359
8cd79558
GS
3360=item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
3361
a1063b2d 3362(D deprecated) You have written something like this:
8cd79558
GS
3363
3364 sub doit
3365 {
3366 use attrs qw(locked);
3367 }
3368
3369You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
3370
3371 sub doit : locked
3372 {
3373 ...
3374
3375The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
3376backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
3377
a0d0e21e
LW
3378=item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3379
e476b1b5 3380(S precedence) The old irregular construct
cb1a09d0 3381
a0d0e21e
LW
3382 open FOO || die;
3383
3384is now misinterpreted as
3385
3386 open(FOO || die);
3387
be771a83
GS
3388because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3389list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3390parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3391of "||".
a0d0e21e 3392
3cdd684c
TP
3393=item Premature end of script headers
3394
3395See Server error.
3396
6df41af2
GS
3397=item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3398
be771a83 3399(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 3400before now. Check your control flow.
6df41af2 3401
9a7dcd9c 3402=item print() on closed filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 3403
be771a83 3404(W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 3405before now. Check your control flow.
a0d0e21e 3406
6df41af2 3407=item Process terminated by SIG%s
a0d0e21e 3408
6df41af2
GS
3409(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3410applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3411port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3412L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
fecfaeb8 3413in L<perlos2>.
a0d0e21e 3414
3fe9a6f1 3415=item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4633a7c4 3416
9a0b3859 3417(S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
be771a83 3418declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4633a7c4 3419
ed9aa3b7
SG
3420=item Prototype not terminated
3421
2a6fd447 3422(F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
ed9aa3b7
SG
3423definition.
3424
96ebfdd7
RK
3425=item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3426
3427(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3428meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3429where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.