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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
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18The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
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
f61d411c 57=item '!' allowed only after types %s
ef54e1a4 58
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59(F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only after certain types.
60See 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
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74To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or by declaring 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 (//), substitution (s///), and
116transliteration (tr///) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
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.
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165
166=item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
167
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168(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
169spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
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170
171=item assertion botched: %s
172
173(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
174
175=item Assertion failed: file "%s"
176
177(P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
178
179=item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
180
181(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
182must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
183know which context to supply to the right side.
184
5243b939 185=item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
fe58ced6 186
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187(F) When vec is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
188greater than or equal to zero.
fe58ced6 189
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190=item Attempt to bless into a reference
191
192(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
193the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
194supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
195
196 bless $self, $proto;
197
198when you intended
199
200 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
201
202If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
203of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
204example by:
205
206 bless $self, "$proto";
207
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208=item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
209
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210(P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
211that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
212outside any of those arenas.
a0d0e21e 213
54310121 214=item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
bbce6d69 215
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216(P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
217strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
218strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
219of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
bbce6d69 220
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221=item Attempt to free temp prematurely
222
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223(W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
224free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
225SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
226free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
227try to free it.
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228
229=item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
230
e476b1b5 231(P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
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232
233=item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
234
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235(W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
236see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
237earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
238This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
239that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
240mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
241corrupted.
a0d0e21e 242
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243=item Attempt to join self
244
245(F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
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246impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
247to move the join() to some other thread.
dcdda58d 248
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249=item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
250
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251(W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
252function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
253means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
254invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
255literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
256avoid this warning.
84902520 257
b7a902f4 258=item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
259
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260(W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
261used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
262dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
b7a902f4 263
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264=item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %d
265
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266(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
267or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
5f05dabc 268S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
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269S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
270
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271=item Bad evalled substitution pattern
272
273(F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the replacement for a
274substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
275most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
276
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277=item Bad filehandle: %s
278
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279(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
280symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
281open(), or did it in another package.
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282
283=item Bad free() ignored
284
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285(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
286been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
9ea8bc6d 287setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
33c8a3fe 288
9ea8bc6d 289This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
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290dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
291which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
a0d0e21e 292
aa689395 293=item Bad hash
294
295(P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
296
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297=item Bad index while coercing array into hash
298
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299(F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
300pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
301See L<perlref>.
57079c46 302
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303=item Badly placed ()'s
304
305(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
306of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
307Perl yourself.
308
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309=item Bad name after %s::
310
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311(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
312didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
313of quotes, so
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314
315 $var = 'myvar';
316 $sym = mypack::$var;
317
318is not the same as
319
320 $var = 'myvar';
321 $sym = "mypack::$var";
322
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323=item Bad realloc() ignored
324
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325(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
326never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
327by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
4ad56ec9 328
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329=item Bad symbol for array
330
331(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
332wasn't a symbol table entry.
333
334=item Bad symbol for filehandle
335
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336(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
337that wasn't a symbol table entry.
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338
339=item Bad symbol for hash
340
341(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
342wasn't a symbol table entry.
343
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344=item Bareword found in conditional
345
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346(W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
347conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
348of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
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349
350 open FOO || die;
351
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352It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
353a bareword:
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354
355 use constant TYPO => 1;
356 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
357
358The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
359
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360=item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
361
362(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
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363subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
364symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
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365
366=item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
367
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368(W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
369compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
370you need to predeclare a package?
6df41af2 371
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372=item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
373
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374(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
375subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
376exited.
a0d0e21e 377
68dc0745 378=item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
379
380(F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
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381implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
382occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
383be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
384depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
68dc0745 385
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386=item \1 better written as $1
387
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388(W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
389The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
390substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
391because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
392there are more than 9 backreferences.
6df41af2 393
252aa082
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394=item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
395
e476b1b5 396(W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
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397(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
398L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
252aa082 399
69282e91 400=item bind() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 401
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402(W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
403check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
a0d0e21e 404
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405=item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
406
407(W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
408Check you control flow and number of arguments.
409
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410=item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
411
e476b1b5 412(W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
c5a0f51a 413
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414=item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
415
be771a83 416(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
b45f050a 417copyable.
4633a7c4 418
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419=item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
420
421(F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
422which provides a race condition that breaks security.
423
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424=item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
425
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426(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
427iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
428which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
f675dbe5 429
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430=item Callback called exit
431
4929bf7b 432(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
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433exited by calling exit.
434
6df41af2 435=item %s() called too early to check prototype
f675dbe5 436
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437(W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
438parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
439that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
440early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
441subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
442checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
443function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
444the warning. See L<perlsub>.
f675dbe5 445
6df41af2 446=item / cannot take a count
a0d0e21e 447
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448(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
449you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
450L<perlfunc/pack>.
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451
452=item Can't bless non-reference value
453
454(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
455encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
456
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457=item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
458
459(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
460functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
461in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
462
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463=item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
464
465(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
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466object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
467like this will reproduce the error:
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468
469 $BADREF = undef;
470 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
471 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
472
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473=item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
474
54310121 475(F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
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476ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
477didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
478object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
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479
480=item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
481
482(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
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483object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
484defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
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485Something like this will reproduce the error:
486
487 $BADREF = 42;
488 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
489 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
490
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491=item Can't chdir to %s
492
493(F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
494that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
495
0545a864 496=item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
104d25b7 497
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498(P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
499nosuid.
104d25b7 500
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501=item Can't coerce array into hash
502
503(F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
504information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
505only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
506
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507=item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
508
509(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 510(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
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511say things like:
512
513 *foo += 1;
514
515You CAN say
516
517 $foo = *foo;
518 $foo += 1;
519
520but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
521
522=item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
523
524(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 525(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
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526
527=item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
528
529(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
55497cff 530(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
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531
532=item Can't create pipe mailbox
533
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534(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
535quotas or other plumbing problems.
a0d0e21e 536
eb64745e 537=item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
a0d0e21e 538
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539(S) Currently, only scalar variables can declared with a specific class
540qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be extended
541for other types of variables in future.
542
543=item Can't declare %s in "%s"
544
545(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
546"our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
a0d0e21e 547
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548=item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
549
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550(S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
551a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
6df41af2 552
a0d0e21e
LW
553=item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
554
be771a83
GS
555(S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
556reason.
a0d0e21e 557
54310121 558=item Can't do inplace edit without backup
a0d0e21e 559
be771a83
GS
560(F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
561reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
562C<-i.bak>, or some such.
a0d0e21e 563
10f9c03d 564=item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
a0d0e21e 565
e476b1b5 566(S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
10f9c03d
CK
567characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
568inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
a0d0e21e 569
79eeca27 570=item Can't do {n,m} with n > m before << HERE in regex m/%s/
a0d0e21e 571
b45f050a 572(F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
79eeca27 573regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The << HERE shows in the
b45f050a 574regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e
LW
575
576=item Can't do setegid!
577
be771a83
GS
578(P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
579suidperl.
a0d0e21e
LW
580
581=item Can't do seteuid!
582
583(P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
584
585=item Can't do setuid
586
be771a83
GS
587(F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
588setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
589sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
590the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
591file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
592sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
a0d0e21e
LW
593
594=item Can't do waitpid with flags
595
be771a83
GS
596(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
597waitpid() without flags is emulated.
a0d0e21e 598
a0d0e21e
LW
599=item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
600
be771a83
GS
601(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
602point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
603line.
a0d0e21e
LW
604
605=item Can't exec "%s": %s
606
be771a83
GS
607(W exec) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
608named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
609permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
610C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
611architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
612can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
613#! at all.)
a0d0e21e
LW
614
615=item Can't exec %s
616
be771a83
GS
617(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
618that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
619need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
a0d0e21e
LW
620
621=item Can't execute %s
622
be771a83
GS
623(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
624found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
2a92aaa0 625
6df41af2 626=item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
2a92aaa0 627
be771a83
GS
628(F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
629is no builtin with the name C<word>.
6df41af2
GS
630
631=item Can't find label %s
632
be771a83
GS
633(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
634possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2a92aaa0
GS
635
636=item Can't find %s on PATH
637
be771a83
GS
638(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
639found in the PATH.
a0d0e21e 640
6df41af2 641=item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
a0d0e21e 642
be771a83
GS
643(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
644found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
645script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
a0d0e21e
LW
646
647=item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
648
be771a83
GS
649(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
650that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
651nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
a0d0e21e 652
fb73857a 653 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
654
be771a83
GS
655If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
656unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
657editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
a0d0e21e 658
0103b764
JH
659=item Can't find %s property definition %s
660
f91328b7
JH
661(F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property for
662example \p{Lu} is all uppercase letters. Escape the C<\p>, either
663C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
664possible C<\E>).
0103b764 665
a0d0e21e
LW
666=item Can't fork
667
be771a83
GS
668(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
669pipeline.
a0d0e21e 670
748a9306
LW
671=item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
672
be771a83
GS
673(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
674between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
675Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
676the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
677account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
678the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
679the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
680the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
681if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
682because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
683appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
684and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
685routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
686shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
687only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
748a9306 688
a0d0e21e
LW
689=item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
690
be771a83
GS
691(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
692pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
a0d0e21e
LW
693
694=item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
695
748a9306
LW
696(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
697mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
a0d0e21e 698
6df41af2 699=item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
a0d0e21e 700
be771a83
GS
701(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
702loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
6df41af2
GS
703
704=item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
705
be771a83
GS
706(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
707a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
708you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
709See L<perlfunc/goto>.
a0d0e21e 710
b150fb22
RH
711=item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
712
be771a83
GS
713(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
714"string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
715probably don't want to.)
b150fb22 716
6df41af2
GS
717=item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
718
be771a83
GS
719(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
720subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
721cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
722routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
6df41af2 723
0b5b802d
GS
724=item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
725
be771a83
GS
726(W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
727signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
728signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
729processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
730situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
731may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
0b5b802d 732
6df41af2 733=item Can't "last" outside a loop block
4633a7c4 734
6df41af2 735(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
be771a83
GS
736except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
737block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
738block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
739usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
740inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
741L<perlfunc/last>.
4633a7c4 742
748a9306
LW
743=item Can't localize lexical variable %s
744
2ba9eb46 745(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
748a9306
LW
746lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
747localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
748package name.
749
0ebe0038
SM
750=item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
751
be771a83
GS
752(F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
753reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
754can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
755directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
0ebe0038 756
6df41af2 757=item Can't localize through a reference
4727527e 758
6df41af2
GS
759(F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
760handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
be771a83
GS
761pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
762that $ref will still be a reference.
4727527e 763
ec889f3a
GS
764=item Can't locate %s
765
766(F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
767found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
be771a83
GS
768unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
769need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
770the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
771to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
772L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
a0d0e21e 773
6df41af2
GS
774=item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
775
be771a83
GS
776(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
777autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
778are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
779the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
6df41af2 780
a0d0e21e
LW
781=item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
782
783(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
784functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
2ba9eb46 785method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
a0d0e21e 786
c1899e02
GS
787=item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
788
789(F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
790"Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
791that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
792
a0d0e21e
LW
793=item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
794
be771a83
GS
795(W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
796doesn't seem to exist.
a0d0e21e 797
3e3baf6d
TB
798=item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
799
be771a83
GS
800(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
801VMS.
3e3baf6d 802
a0d0e21e
LW
803=item Can't modify %s in %s
804
be771a83
GS
805(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
806to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
a0d0e21e 807
54310121 808=item Can't modify nonexistent substring
a0d0e21e
LW
809
810(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
811a NULL.
812
6df41af2
GS
813=item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
814
815(F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
816such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
817
5f05dabc 818=item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
a0d0e21e 819
5f05dabc 820(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
a0d0e21e
LW
821buffer.
822
6df41af2
GS
823=item Can't "next" outside a loop block
824
825(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
826there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
be771a83
GS
827count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
828grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
829though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
830once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
6df41af2 831
a0d0e21e
LW
832=item Can't open %s: %s
833
c47ff5f1 834(S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
08e9d68e
DD
835filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
836switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
be771a83
GS
837is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
838the command line.
a0d0e21e
LW
839
840=item Can't open bidirectional pipe
841
be771a83
GS
842(W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
843You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
844as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
845">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
a0d0e21e 846
748a9306
LW
847=item Can't open error file %s as stderr
848
be771a83
GS
849(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
850redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
851the command line for writing.
748a9306
LW
852
853=item Can't open input file %s as stdin
854
be771a83
GS
855(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
856redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
857command line for reading.
748a9306
LW
858
859=item Can't open output file %s as stdout
860
be771a83
GS
861(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
862redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
863the command line for writing.
748a9306
LW
864
865=item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
866
be771a83
GS
867(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
868redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
869for stdout.
748a9306 870
a0d0e21e
LW
871=item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
872
873(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
874
6df41af2
GS
875=item Can't read CRTL environ
876
877(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
878from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
879missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
be771a83
GS
880or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
881searched.
6df41af2 882
7bac28a0 883=item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
884
885(F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
be771a83
GS
886pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
887it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
7bac28a0 888this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
889
6df41af2
GS
890=item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
891
892(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
893there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
894count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
895or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
896though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
897loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
898
10f9c03d
CK
899=item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
900
be771a83
GS
901(S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
902file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
903the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
10f9c03d 904
a0d0e21e
LW
905=item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
906
e476b1b5 907(S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
10f9c03d 908probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
a0d0e21e 909
748a9306
LW
910=item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
911
be771a83
GS
912(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
913to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
748a9306 914
6df41af2
GS
915=item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
916
be771a83
GS
917(F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
918to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
919method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
6df41af2 920
a0d0e21e
LW
921=item Can't reswap uid and euid
922
be771a83
GS
923(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
924suidperl.
a0d0e21e 925
cd06dffe
GS
926=item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
927
be771a83
GS
928(F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
929temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
930is not allowed.
cd06dffe 931
6df41af2
GS
932=item Can't return outside a subroutine
933
934(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
935there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
936
a0d0e21e
LW
937=item Can't stat script "%s"
938
be771a83
GS
939(P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
940open already. Bizarre.
a0d0e21e
LW
941
942=item Can't swap uid and euid
943
be771a83
GS
944(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
945suidperl.
a0d0e21e
LW
946
947=item Can't take log of %g
948
fb73857a 949(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
950negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
be771a83
GS
951standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
952negative numbers.
a0d0e21e
LW
953
954=item Can't take sqrt of %g
955
956(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
fb73857a 957negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
958with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
a0d0e21e
LW
959
960=item Can't undef active subroutine
961
962(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
963however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
964redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
965
966=item Can't unshift
967
968(F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
969as the main Perl stack.
970
971=item Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
972
be771a83
GS
973(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
974into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
975specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
976indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
a0d0e21e
LW
977
978=item Can't upgrade to undef
979
be771a83
GS
980(P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme of
981upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the code
982calling sv_upgrade.
a0d0e21e 983
6df41af2
GS
984=item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
985
986(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
987be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
988
989=item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
990
be771a83
GS
991(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
992references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
6df41af2 993
1d2dff63
GS
994=item Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
995
996(F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
997Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
998provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
999
6df41af2
GS
1000=item Can't use %s for loop variable
1001
be771a83
GS
1002(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1003foreach.
6df41af2
GS
1004
1005=item Can't use global %s in "my"
1006
be771a83
GS
1007(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1008is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1009(namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1010have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
6df41af2
GS
1011weren't.
1012
c07a80fd 1013=item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1014
1015(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
c47ff5f1 1016You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
c07a80fd 1017and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1018Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1019lexical variable.
1020
a0d0e21e
LW
1021=item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1022
1023(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1024reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1025test the type of the reference, if need be.
1026
748a9306 1027=item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
a0d0e21e 1028
be771a83
GS
1029(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1030references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e 1031
748a9306
LW
1032=item Can't use subscript on %s
1033
1034(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1035subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1036didn't look like an array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1037
6df41af2
GS
1038=item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1039
75b44862
GS
1040(W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1041creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1042backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
be771a83
GS
1043expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1044value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1045instead.
6df41af2 1046
810b8aa5
GS
1047=item Can't weaken a nonreference
1048
1049(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1050references can be weakened.
1051
5f05dabc 1052=item Can't x= to read-only value
a0d0e21e 1053
be771a83
GS
1054(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1055with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
a0d0e21e
LW
1056Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1057
5a211162 1058=item chmod() mode argument is missing initial 0
a0d0e21e 1059
e476b1b5 1060(W chmod) A novice will sometimes say
a0d0e21e
LW
1061
1062 chmod 777, $filename
1063
be771a83
GS
1064not realizing that 777 will be interpreted as a decimal number,
1065equivalent to 01411. Octal constants are introduced with a leading 0 in
1066Perl, as in C.
a0d0e21e 1067
9ddeeac9 1068=item close() on unopened filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 1069
e476b1b5 1070(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
a0d0e21e 1071
6df41af2
GS
1072=item %s: Command not found
1073
be771a83
GS
1074(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1075Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
6df41af2 1076
7a2e2cd6 1077=item Compilation failed in require
1078
1079(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
be771a83
GS
1080Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1081encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
7a2e2cd6 1082
c3464db5
DD
1083=item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1084
be771a83
GS
1085(W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1086situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1087to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1088arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1089recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1090under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1091in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
c2e66d9e 1092that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
be771a83 1093on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
c3464db5 1094
69282e91 1095=item connect() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 1096
be771a83
GS
1097(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1098to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1099L<perlfunc/connect>.
a0d0e21e 1100
41ab332f 1101=item Constant(%s)%s: %s
6df41af2 1102
be771a83
GS
1103(F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1104an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1105specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1106corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1107L<overload>.
6df41af2 1108
779c5bc9
GS
1109=item Constant is not %s reference
1110
1111(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
be771a83
GS
1112is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1113The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1114usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
779c5bc9
GS
1115See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1116
4cee8e80
CS
1117=item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1118
be771a83
GS
1119(S|W redefine) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1120eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1121commentary and workarounds.
4cee8e80 1122
9607fc9c 1123=item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1124
be771a83
GS
1125(W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1126for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1127workarounds.
9607fc9c 1128
e7ea3e70
IZ
1129=item Copy method did not return a reference
1130
13a2d996
SP
1131(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1132L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
e7ea3e70 1133
6798c92b
GS
1134=item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1135
1136(F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1137
a0d0e21e
LW
1138=item corrupted regexp pointers
1139
1140(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1141expression compiler gave it.
1142
1143=item corrupted regexp program
1144
be771a83
GS
1145(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1146valid magic number.
a0d0e21e 1147
6df41af2
GS
1148=item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1149
1150(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1151
1152=item C<-p> destination: %s
1153
1154(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
1155command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
1156redirected it with select().)
1157
1158=item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
1159
1160(F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
1161know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
1162
a0d0e21e
LW
1163=item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1164
be771a83
GS
1165(W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1166100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1167infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1168which case it indicates something else.
a0d0e21e 1169
f10b0346 1170=item defined(@array) is deprecated
69794302 1171
be771a83
GS
1172(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1173checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1174array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
69794302 1175
f10b0346 1176=item defined(%hash) is deprecated
69794302 1177
be771a83
GS
1178(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1179checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1180is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
69794302 1181
fc36a67e 1182=item Delimiter for here document is too long
1183
be771a83
GS
1184(F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1185long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1186that triggers this error.
fc36a67e 1187
3cdd684c
TP
1188=item Did not produce a valid header
1189
1190See Server error.
1191
6df41af2
GS
1192=item %s did not return a true value
1193
1194(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1195it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1196traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1197do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1198
cc507455 1199=item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
4633a7c4 1200
be771a83
GS
1201(W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1202such.
4633a7c4 1203
cc507455 1204=item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
33633739 1205
be771a83
GS
1206(W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1207variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1208seems superfluous.
33633739 1209
cc507455 1210=item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
a0d0e21e 1211
be771a83
GS
1212(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1213@hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1214carried away.
748a9306 1215
7e1af8bc 1216=item Died
5f05dabc 1217
1218(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1219you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1220
3cdd684c
TP
1221=item Document contains no data
1222
1223See Server error.
1224
a0d0e21e
LW
1225=item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1226
1227(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1228
1229=item do_study: out of memory
1230
1231(P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1232
6df41af2
GS
1233=item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1234
1235(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1236found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1237name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1238because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
be771a83
GS
1239"sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1240something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1241subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1242"sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
6df41af2 1243
a0d0e21e
LW
1244=item Duplicate free() ignored
1245
be771a83
GS
1246(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1247already been freed.
a0d0e21e 1248
4633a7c4
LW
1249=item elseif should be elsif
1250
be771a83
GS
1251(S) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's ugly.
1252Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1253"elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
4633a7c4
LW
1254unlikely to be what you want.
1255
85ab1d1d 1256=item entering effective %s failed
5ff3f7a4 1257
85ab1d1d 1258(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
5ff3f7a4
GS
1259effective uids or gids failed.
1260
748a9306
LW
1261=item Error converting file specification %s
1262
5f05dabc 1263(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
748a9306 1264specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
be771a83
GS
1265single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1266an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1267conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
748a9306 1268
e4d48cc9
GS
1269=item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1270
be771a83
GS
1271(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1272expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1273is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
e4d48cc9 1274
e4d48cc9
GS
1275=item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1276
be771a83
GS
1277(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1278C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1279pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1280is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1281building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1282that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
e4d48cc9 1283
6df41af2
GS
1284=item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1285
be771a83
GS
1286(F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1287assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1288pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
6df41af2 1289
fc36a67e 1290=item Excessively long <> operator
1291
1292(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1293Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1294filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1295variable and glob that.
1296
f86702cc 1297=item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
a0d0e21e
LW
1298
1299(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1300
1301=item Exiting eval via %s
1302
be771a83
GS
1303(W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1304goto, or a loop control statement.
e476b1b5
GS
1305
1306=item Exiting format via %s
1307
be771a83
GS
1308(W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1309goto, or a loop control statement.
a0d0e21e 1310
0a753a76 1311=item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1312
be771a83
GS
1313(W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1314sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1315loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
0a753a76 1316
a0d0e21e
LW
1317=item Exiting subroutine via %s
1318
be771a83
GS
1319(W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1320as a goto, or a loop control statement.
a0d0e21e
LW
1321
1322=item Exiting substitution via %s
1323
be771a83
GS
1324(W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1325as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
a0d0e21e 1326
7b8d334a
GS
1327=item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1328
be771a83
GS
1329(W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1330the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1331usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1332e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
7b8d334a 1333
6df41af2
GS
1334=item %s: Expression syntax
1335
be771a83
GS
1336(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1337Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
6df41af2
GS
1338
1339=item %s failed--call queue aborted
1340
1341(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1342END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1343routines has been prematurely ended.
1344
73b437c8
JH
1345=item false [] range "%s" in regexp
1346
be771a83
GS
1347(W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1348character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The
1349"-" in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider
1350quoting the "-", "\-". See L<perlre>.
73b437c8 1351
748a9306 1352=item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
a0d0e21e 1353
be771a83
GS
1354(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1355system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1356details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1357you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
a0d0e21e
LW
1358
1359=item fcntl is not implemented
1360
1361(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1362PDP-11 or something?
1363
af8c498a 1364=item Filehandle %s opened only for input
a0d0e21e 1365
be771a83
GS
1366(W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended it
1367to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>"
1368or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write
1369the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
a0d0e21e 1370
af8c498a 1371=item Filehandle %s opened only for output
a0d0e21e 1372
be771a83
GS
1373(W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If
1374you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1375with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1376intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
a0d0e21e
LW
1377
1378=item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1379
1380(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
be771a83
GS
1381a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1382happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1383name.
a0d0e21e
LW
1384
1385=item Final @ should be \@ or @name
1386
1387(F) You must now decide whether the final @ in a string was meant to be
be771a83
GS
1388a literal "at" sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1389happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1390name.
a0d0e21e 1391
56e90b21
GS
1392=item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1393
be771a83 1394(W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
c289d2f7 1395some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
be771a83
GS
1396filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1397same name?
56e90b21 1398
79eeca27 1399=item Quantifier follows nothing before << HERE in regex m/%s/
6df41af2 1400
b45f050a 1401(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
79eeca27 1402meant it literally. The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
b45f050a 1403problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
6df41af2
GS
1404
1405=item Format not terminated
1406
1407(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1408to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1409
a0d0e21e
LW
1410=item Format %s redefined
1411
e476b1b5 1412(W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
a0d0e21e
LW
1413
1414 {
4438c4b7 1415 no warnings;
a0d0e21e
LW
1416 eval "format NAME =...";
1417 }
1418
a0d0e21e
LW
1419=item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1420
e476b1b5 1421(W syntax) You said
a0d0e21e
LW
1422
1423 if ($foo = 123)
1424
1425when you meant
1426
1427 if ($foo == 123)
1428
1429(or something like that).
1430
6df41af2
GS
1431=item %s found where operator expected
1432
1433(S) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator. If it
be771a83
GS
1434sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1435operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1436operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
6df41af2 1437
a0d0e21e
LW
1438=item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1439
1440(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1441
1442=item gethostent not implemented
1443
1444(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1445because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1446on the Internet.
1447
69282e91 1448=item get%sname() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 1449
be771a83
GS
1450(W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1451socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
a0d0e21e 1452
748a9306
LW
1453=item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1454
1455(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1456C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1457
6df41af2
GS
1458=item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1459
be771a83
GS
1460(W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1461forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
6df41af2
GS
1462L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1463
1464=item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1465
1466(F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1467must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1468"our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1469is in (using "::").
1470
e476b1b5
GS
1471=item glob failed (%s)
1472
be771a83
GS
1473(W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1474C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1475C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1476nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1477resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1478broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1479config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1480were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1481empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1482think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
75b44862 1483C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
e476b1b5 1484
a0d0e21e
LW
1485=item Glob not terminated
1486
1487(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
be771a83
GS
1488a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1489not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1490earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
a0d0e21e 1491
6df41af2 1492=item Got an error from DosAllocMem
a0d0e21e 1493
6df41af2
GS
1494(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1495version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
a0d0e21e
LW
1496
1497=item goto must have label
1498
1499(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1500unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1501
6df41af2
GS
1502=item %s had compilation errors
1503
1504(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1505
a0d0e21e
LW
1506=item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1507
be771a83
GS
1508(S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1509to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1510created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
a0d0e21e
LW
1511
1512=item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1513
be771a83
GS
1514(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1515spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
a0d0e21e 1516
6df41af2
GS
1517=item %s has too many errors
1518
1519(F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1520Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1521
252aa082
JH
1522=item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1523
e476b1b5 1524(W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
9e24b6e2
JH
1525(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1526L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
252aa082 1527
8903cb82 1528=item Identifier too long
1529
1530(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
fc36a67e 1531about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
be771a83
GS
1532names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1533of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
8903cb82 1534
6df41af2 1535=item Illegal binary digit %s
f675dbe5 1536
6df41af2 1537(F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
f675dbe5 1538
6df41af2 1539=item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
a0d0e21e 1540
be771a83
GS
1541(W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1542binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1543offending digit.
a0d0e21e 1544
4fdae800 1545=item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1546
d5898338 1547(F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
be771a83
GS
1548would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1549when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1550version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1551to your Perl administrator.
4fdae800 1552
a0d0e21e
LW
1553=item Illegal division by zero
1554
be771a83
GS
1555(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1556your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1557meaningless input.
a0d0e21e 1558
6df41af2
GS
1559=item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1560
be771a83
GS
1561(W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1562A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1563number stopped before the illegal character.
6df41af2 1564
a0d0e21e
LW
1565=item Illegal modulus zero
1566
be771a83
GS
1567(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1568numbers don't take to this kindly.
a0d0e21e 1569
6df41af2 1570=item Illegal number of bits in vec
399388f4 1571
6df41af2
GS
1572(F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1573two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
399388f4
GS
1574
1575=item Illegal octal digit %s
a0d0e21e
LW
1576
1577(F) You used an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1578
399388f4 1579=item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
748a9306 1580
75b44862
GS
1581(W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in a octal number.
1582Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
748a9306 1583
6df41af2 1584=item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
6ff81951 1585
6df41af2
GS
1586(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1587following switches: B<-[DIMUdmw]>.
6ff81951 1588
6df41af2 1589=item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
81e118e0 1590
75b44862 1591(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
be771a83
GS
1592internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1593delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
09bef843 1594
6df41af2 1595=item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
54310121 1596
be771a83
GS
1597(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1598name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1599didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1600ignored.
54310121 1601
6df41af2 1602=item (in cleanup) %s
9607fc9c 1603
be771a83
GS
1604(W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1605the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1606system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1607times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1608would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
6df41af2 1609
be771a83
GS
1610Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1611also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
9607fc9c 1612
a0d0e21e
LW
1613=item Insecure dependency in %s
1614
8b1a09fc 1615(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
be771a83
GS
1616The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1617setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1618tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1619from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1620such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1621L<perlsec> for more information.
a0d0e21e
LW
1622
1623=item Insecure directory in %s
1624
be771a83
GS
1625(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1626setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1627the world. See L<perlsec>.
a0d0e21e 1628
62f468fc 1629=item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
a0d0e21e
LW
1630
1631(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
62f468fc
MG
1632setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1633C<$ENV{ENV}> or C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> are derived from data supplied (or
a0d0e21e
LW
1634potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a
1635known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1636
a7ae9550
GS
1637=item Integer overflow in %s number
1638
75b44862 1639(W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
be771a83
GS
1640either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1641your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1642On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
9e24b6e2
JH
1643representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
16440b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1645transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1646internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1647operations.
bbce6d69 1648
79eeca27 1649=item Internal disaster before << HERE in regex m/%s/
6df41af2
GS
1650
1651(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
79eeca27 1652The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
b45f050a
JF
1653discovered.
1654
6df41af2 1655
748a9306
LW
1656=item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1657
be771a83
GS
1658(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1659you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1660to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1661L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1662Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1663terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
748a9306 1664
79eeca27 1665=item Internal urp before << HERE in regex m/%s/
b45f050a 1666
79eeca27 1667(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The <<<HERE
b45f050a 1668shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
a0d0e21e 1669
a0d0e21e 1670
6df41af2
GS
1671=item %s (...) interpreted as function
1672
75b44862 1673(W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
be771a83 1674followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
13a2d996
SP
1675operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1676L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
6df41af2 1677
09bef843
SB
1678=item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1679
1680The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1681by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1682
1683=item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1684
be771a83
GS
1685The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1686recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
09bef843 1687
c635e13b 1688=item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1689
be771a83
GS
1690(W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1691L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
c635e13b 1692
6df41af2
GS
1693=item invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
1694
1695(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1696greater than the maximum character. See L<perlre>.
1697
c2e66d9e
GS
1698=item invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator
1699
1700(F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1701character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1702
09bef843
SB
1703=item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1704
0120eecf 1705(F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
be771a83
GS
1706elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1707parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1708See L<attributes>.
09bef843 1709
96e4d5b1 1710=item Invalid type in pack: '%s'
1711
8903cb82 1712(F) The given character is not a valid pack type. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
be771a83
GS
1713(W pack) The given character is not a valid pack type but used to be
1714silently ignored.
96e4d5b1 1715
1716=item Invalid type in unpack: '%s'
1717
be771a83
GS
1718(F) The given character is not a valid unpack type. See
1719L<perlfunc/unpack>.
75b44862
GS
1720(W unpack) The given character is not a valid unpack type but used to be
1721silently ignored.
96e4d5b1 1722
a0d0e21e
LW
1723=item ioctl is not implemented
1724
1725(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1726strange for a machine that supports C.
1727
c289d2f7
JH
1728=item ioctl() on unopened %s
1729
1730(W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1731Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1732
6ad11d81
JH
1733=item `%s' is not a code reference
1734
1735(W) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant needs
1736to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1737to a subroutine.
1738
1739=item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1740
1741(W) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is unaware of.
1742
a0d0e21e
LW
1743=item junk on end of regexp
1744
1745(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1746
1747=item Label not found for "last %s"
1748
be771a83
GS
1749(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1750of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1751L<perlfunc/last>.
a0d0e21e
LW
1752
1753=item Label not found for "next %s"
1754
1755(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1756that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1757L<perlfunc/last>.
1758
1759=item Label not found for "redo %s"
1760
1761(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1762that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1763L<perlfunc/last>.
1764
85ab1d1d 1765=item leaving effective %s failed
5ff3f7a4 1766
85ab1d1d 1767(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
5ff3f7a4
GS
1768effective uids or gids failed.
1769
69282e91 1770=item listen() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 1771
be771a83
GS
1772(W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1773to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1774L<perlfunc/listen>.
a0d0e21e 1775
9d837945
TM
1776=item lstat() on filehandle %s
1777
1778(W io) You tried to do a lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
1779by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
1780instead on the filehandle.)
1781
cd06dffe
GS
1782=item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
1783
1784(F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
be771a83
GS
1785values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
1786L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
cd06dffe 1787
551e1d92 1788=item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented before << HERE %s
b45f050a
JF
1789
1790(F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
79eeca27 1791handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The << HERE shows in
b45f050a 1792the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2e50fd82 1793
6df41af2
GS
1794=item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
1795
1796(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
1797
1798 prefix1;prefix2
1799
1800or
1801
1802 prefix1 prefix2
1803
be771a83
GS
1804with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
1805a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
1806appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
fecfaeb8 1807"PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
6df41af2 1808
ba210ebe
JH
1809=item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
1810
1811Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules.
1812
dea0fc0b
JH
1813=item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
1814
1815Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
1816doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
1817
6df41af2
GS
1818=item %s matches null string many times
1819
1820(W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
be771a83
GS
1821regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. See
1822L<perlre>.
6df41af2
GS
1823
1824=item % may only be used in unpack
1825
1826(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
be771a83
GS
1827checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
1828See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
6df41af2 1829
a0d0e21e
LW
1830=item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
1831
1832(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
e7ea3e70 1833doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 1834
3cdd684c
TP
1835=item Method %s not permitted
1836
1837See Server error.
1838
a0d0e21e
LW
1839=item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
1840
1841(S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
1842by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
1843ended earlier on the current line.
1844
1845=item Misplaced _ in number
1846
e476b1b5 1847(W syntax) An underline in a decimal constant wasn't on a 3-digit boundary.
a0d0e21e 1848
4a2d328f 1849=item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
423cee85 1850
4a2d328f 1851(F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
423cee85
JH
1852double-quotish context.
1853
a0d0e21e
LW
1854=item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
1855
1856(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
1857"indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
1858
06eaf0bc
GS
1859=item Missing command in piped open
1860
be771a83
GS
1861(W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
1862C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
1863blank.
06eaf0bc 1864
6df41af2
GS
1865=item Missing name in "my sub"
1866
be771a83
GS
1867(F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
1868they have a name with which they can be found.
6df41af2
GS
1869
1870=item Missing $ on loop variable
1871
be771a83
GS
1872(F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
1873are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
1874can vary from one line to the next.
6df41af2 1875
cc507455 1876=item (Missing operator before %s?)
748a9306
LW
1877
1878(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1879found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
1880
d98d5fff 1881=item Missing right curly or square bracket
a0d0e21e 1882
be771a83
GS
1883(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
1884ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
1885were last editing.
a0d0e21e 1886
6df41af2
GS
1887=item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
1888
1889(S) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s
1890found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
1891the previous line just because you saw this message.
1892
a0d0e21e
LW
1893=item Modification of a read-only value attempted
1894
1895(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
5f05dabc 1896constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
a0d0e21e
LW
1897catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
1898
1899 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
1900 mod(2);
1901
1902Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
1903
c5674021
PDF
1904Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
1905is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
1906
1907 $x = 1;
1908 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
1909 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
1910 }
1911
7a4340ed 1912=item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
a0d0e21e
LW
1913
1914(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
1915subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
1916backwards.
1917
7a4340ed 1918=item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
a0d0e21e 1919
be771a83
GS
1920(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
1921couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
a0d0e21e
LW
1922
1923=item Module name must be constant
1924
1925(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
1926
be98fb35 1927=item Module name required with -%c option
6df41af2 1928
be98fb35
GS
1929(F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
1930you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
1931about C<-M> and C<-m>.
6df41af2 1932
a0d0e21e
LW
1933=item msg%s not implemented
1934
1935(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
1936
1937=item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
1938
75b44862
GS
1939(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
1940They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
8b1a09fc 1941
6df41af2 1942=item / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
09bef843 1943
6df41af2 1944(F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
be771a83
GS
1945Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
1946or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6df41af2
GS
1947
1948=item / must be followed by a, A or Z
1949
be771a83
GS
1950(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, which
1951must be followed by one of the letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort
1952of string is to be unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6df41af2
GS
1953
1954=item / must follow a numeric type
1955
be771a83
GS
1956(F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#', but this did not
1957follow some numeric unpack specification. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6df41af2
GS
1958
1959=item "my sub" not yet implemented
1960
be771a83
GS
1961(F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
1962that yet.
6df41af2
GS
1963
1964=item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
1965
be771a83
GS
1966(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
1967sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
1968local() if you want to localize a package variable.
09bef843 1969
8b1a09fc 1970=item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
1971
e476b1b5 1972(W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
be771a83
GS
1973If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
1974again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
77ca0c92 1975provided for this purpose.
a0d0e21e
LW
1976
1977=item Negative length
1978
be771a83
GS
1979(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
1980length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
a0d0e21e 1981
79eeca27 1982=item Nested quantifiers before << HERE in regex m/%s/
a0d0e21e 1983
b45f050a 1984(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
79eeca27 1985things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The << HERE shows in the regular
b45f050a 1986expression about where the problem was discovered.
a0d0e21e 1987
be771a83
GS
1988Note, however, that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
1989C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 1990
b45f050a 1991
6df41af2 1992=item %s never introduced
a0d0e21e 1993
be771a83
GS
1994(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
1995scope before it could possibly have been used.
a0d0e21e
LW
1996
1997=item No %s allowed while running setuid
1998
be771a83
GS
1999(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2000setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2001will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2002securable. See L<perlsec>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2003
2004=item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2005
2006(F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2007
2008=item No comma allowed after %s
2009
2010(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2011allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2012Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2013
0a753a76 2014One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2015constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2016importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2017does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2018explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2019L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2020would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2021remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2022constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2023list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2024this error was triggered?
2025
748a9306
LW
2026=item No command into which to pipe on command line
2027
be771a83
GS
2028(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2029redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2030doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
748a9306 2031
a0d0e21e
LW
2032=item No DB::DB routine defined
2033
be771a83
GS
2034(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2035for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof) didn't
2036define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. Which
2037is odd, because the file should have been required automatically, and
2038should have blown up the require if it didn't parse right.
a0d0e21e
LW
2039
2040=item No dbm on this machine
2041
2042(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
5f05dabc 2043supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2044
2045=item No DBsub routine
2046
2047(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch,
2048but for some reason the perl5db.pl file (or some facsimile thereof)
2049didn't define a DB::sub routine to be called at the beginning of each
2050ordinary subroutine call.
2051
c47ff5f1 2052=item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
748a9306 2053
be771a83
GS
2054(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2055redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2056find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
748a9306 2057
c47ff5f1 2058=item No input file after < on command line
748a9306 2059
be771a83
GS
2060(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2061redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2062name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
748a9306 2063
6df41af2
GS
2064=item No #! line
2065
2066(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2067even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2068
2069=item "no" not allowed in expression
2070
be771a83
GS
2071(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2072returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
6df41af2 2073
c47ff5f1 2074=item No output file after > on command line
748a9306 2075
be771a83
GS
2076(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2077redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2078doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
748a9306 2079
c47ff5f1 2080=item No output file after > or >> on command line
748a9306 2081
be771a83
GS
2082(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2083redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2084find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
748a9306 2085
1ec3e8de
GS
2086=item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2087
be771a83
GS
2088(F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2089declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2090semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
1ec3e8de 2091
a0d0e21e
LW
2092=item No Perl script found in input
2093
2094(F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2095with #! and containing the word "perl".
2096
2097=item No setregid available
2098
2099(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2100your system.
2101
2102=item No setreuid available
2103
2104(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2105your system.
2106
a67e862a 2107=item No space allowed after -%c
a0d0e21e 2108
be771a83
GS
2109(F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2110immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
a0d0e21e 2111
6df41af2
GS
2112=item No %s specified for -%c
2113
2114(F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2115you haven't specified one.
2116
2117=item No such pipe open
2118
2119(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
be771a83
GS
2120close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2121earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
6df41af2 2122
88e9b055 2123=item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
57079c46 2124
88e9b055 2125(F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
57079c46
GA
2126not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2127array indices for that to work.
2128
88e9b055 2129=item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
f1192cee 2130
be771a83
GS
2131(F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2132not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2133%FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2134%usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
f1192cee 2135
a0d0e21e
LW
2136=item No such signal: SIG%s
2137
be771a83
GS
2138(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2139not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2140names on your system.
a0d0e21e
LW
2141
2142=item Not a CODE reference
2143
2144(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2145subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
be771a83
GS
2146use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2147also L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2148
2149=item Not a format reference
2150
2151(F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2152format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2153
2154=item Not a GLOB reference
2155
be771a83
GS
2156(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2157symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2158something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2159kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2160
2161=item Not a HASH reference
2162
be771a83
GS
2163(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2164reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2165find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e 2166
6df41af2
GS
2167=item Not an ARRAY reference
2168
be771a83
GS
2169(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2170a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2171to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
6df41af2 2172
a0d0e21e
LW
2173=item Not a perl script
2174
2175(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2176even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2177mention perl.
2178
2179=item Not a SCALAR reference
2180
be771a83
GS
2181(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2182a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2183to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e
LW
2184
2185=item Not a subroutine reference
2186
2187(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2188subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
be771a83
GS
2189use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2190also L<perlref>.
a0d0e21e 2191
e7ea3e70 2192=item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
a0d0e21e
LW
2193
2194(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
8b1a09fc 2195doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
a0d0e21e 2196
a0d0e21e
LW
2197=item Not enough arguments for %s
2198
2199(F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2200
6df41af2
GS
2201=item Not enough format arguments
2202
be771a83
GS
2203(W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2204supplied. See L<perlform>.
6df41af2
GS
2205
2206=item %s: not found
2207
be771a83
GS
2208(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2209of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2210yourself.
6df41af2
GS
2211
2212=item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
a0d0e21e 2213
6df41af2
GS
2214(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2215timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
be771a83
GS
2216to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2217F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2218need to be added to UTC to get local time.
a0d0e21e
LW
2219
2220=item Null filename used
2221
be771a83
GS
2222(F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2223machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
a0d0e21e 2224
6df41af2
GS
2225=item NULL OP IN RUN
2226
be771a83
GS
2227(P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2228pointer.
6df41af2 2229
55497cff 2230=item Null picture in formline
2231
2232(F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2233specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2234supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2235
a0d0e21e
LW
2236=item Null realloc
2237
2238(P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2239
2240=item NULL regexp argument
2241
5f05dabc 2242(P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
a0d0e21e
LW
2243
2244=item NULL regexp parameter
2245
2246(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2247
fc36a67e 2248=item Number too long
2249
be771a83
GS
2250(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2251about about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2252versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2253the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2254"1_000_000").
fc36a67e 2255
6df41af2
GS
2256=item Octal number in vector unsupported
2257
be771a83
GS
2258(F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2259The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2260future version.
6df41af2 2261
252aa082
JH
2262=item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2263
75b44862 2264(W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
be771a83
GS
2265(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2266L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
252aa082
JH
2267
2268See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2269
6ad11d81
JH
2270=item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2271
2272(W) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of arguments.
2273The arguments should come in pairs.
2274
1930e939 2275=item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
a0d0e21e 2276
be771a83
GS
2277(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2278which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
a0d0e21e 2279
bbce6d69 2280=item Offset outside string
2281
2282(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
be771a83
GS
2283pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2284exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2285the buffer and zero pad the new area.
bbce6d69 2286
9ddeeac9
JH
2287=item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2288
2289(W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
c289d2f7 2290that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
9ddeeac9 2291
c289d2f7 2292=item %s() on unopened %s
2dd78f96
JH
2293
2294(W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2295never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2296call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2297
a0d0e21e
LW
2298=item oops: oopsAV
2299
e476b1b5 2300(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
a0d0e21e
LW
2301
2302=item oops: oopsHV
2303
e476b1b5 2304(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
a0d0e21e 2305
56f7f34b 2306=item Operation `%s': no method found, %s
44a8e56a 2307
be771a83
GS
2308(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2309handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2310of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2311C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
44a8e56a 2312
748a9306
LW
2313=item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2314
be771a83
GS
2315(S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2316was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2317use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2318example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2319"*foo * 'foo'".
748a9306 2320
6df41af2
GS
2321=item "our" variable %s redeclared
2322
be771a83
GS
2323(W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2324in the current lexical scope.
6df41af2 2325
a80b8354
GS
2326=item Out of memory!
2327
2328(X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
be771a83
GS
2329remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2330no option but to exit immediately.
a80b8354 2331
6df41af2 2332=item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
a0d0e21e 2333
6df41af2
GS
2334(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2335remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
be771a83
GS
2336the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2337possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
a0d0e21e 2338
1b979e0a 2339=item Out of memory during request for %s
a0d0e21e 2340
be771a83
GS
2341(X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2342insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2343request.
eff9c6e2
CS
2344
2345The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2346depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
be771a83
GS
2347However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2348emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
b022d2d2
IZ
2349is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2350where the failed request happened.
55497cff 2351
1b979e0a
IZ
2352=item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2353
2354(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
be771a83
GS
2355is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2356C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
1b979e0a 2357
6df41af2
GS
2358=item Out of memory for yacc stack
2359
be771a83
GS
2360(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2361parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2362otherwise.
6df41af2
GS
2363
2364=item @ outside of string
2365
2366(F) You had a pack template that specified an absolute position outside
2367the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2368
2369=item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2370
be771a83
GS
2371(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2372package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2373some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2374mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
6df41af2 2375
a0d0e21e
LW
2376=item page overflow
2377
be771a83
GS
2378(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2379page. See L<perlform>.
a0d0e21e 2380
6df41af2
GS
2381=item panic: %s
2382
2383(P) An internal error.
2384
a0d0e21e
LW
2385=item panic: ck_grep
2386
2387(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2388
2389=item panic: ck_split
2390
2391(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2392
2393=item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2394
be771a83
GS
2395(P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2396there are in the savestack.
a0d0e21e 2397
810b8aa5
GS
2398=item panic: del_backref
2399
2400(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2401reference.
2402
a0d0e21e
LW
2403=item panic: die %s
2404
2405(P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2406it wasn't an eval context.
2407
2408=item panic: do_match
2409
be771a83
GS
2410(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2411data.
a0d0e21e
LW
2412
2413=item panic: do_split
2414
2415(P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2416
2417=item panic: do_subst
2418
be771a83
GS
2419(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2420data.
a0d0e21e
LW
2421
2422=item panic: do_trans
2423
be771a83
GS
2424(P) The internal do_trans() routine was called with invalid operational
2425data.
a0d0e21e 2426
c635e13b 2427=item panic: frexp
2428
2429(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2430
a0d0e21e
LW
2431=item panic: goto
2432
2433(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2434and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2435
2436=item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2437
2438(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2439
2440=item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2441
2442(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2443
e446cec8
IZ
2444=item panic: kid popen errno read
2445
2446(F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2447
a0d0e21e
LW
2448=item panic: last
2449
2450(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2451it wasn't a block context.
2452
2453=item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2454
be771a83
GS
2455(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2456scope.
a0d0e21e
LW
2457
2458=item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2459
2460(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2461invalid enum on the top of it.
2462
810b8aa5
GS
2463=item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2464
2465(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2466references to an object.
2467
6df41af2
GS
2468=item panic: malloc
2469
2470(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2471
a0d0e21e
LW
2472=item panic: mapstart
2473
2474(P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2475
2476=item panic: null array
2477
2478(P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2479
2480=item panic: pad_alloc
2481
2482(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2483and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2484
2485=item panic: pad_free curpad
2486
2487(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2488and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2489
2490=item panic: pad_free po
2491
2492(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2493
2494=item panic: pad_reset curpad
2495
2496(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2497and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2498
2499=item panic: pad_sv po
2500
2501(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2502
2503=item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2504
2505(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2506and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2507
2508=item panic: pad_swipe po
2509
2510(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2511
2512=item panic: pp_iter
2513
2514(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2515
2516=item panic: realloc
2517
2518(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2519
2520=item panic: restartop
2521
2522(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2523didn't supply the destination.
2524
2525=item panic: return
2526
2527(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2528then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2529
2530=item panic: scan_num
2531
2532(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2533
2534=item panic: sv_insert
2535
2536(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2537was string.
2538
2539=item panic: top_env
2540
6224f72b 2541(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
a0d0e21e
LW
2542
2543=item panic: yylex
2544
2545(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2546
dea0fc0b
JH
2547=item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2548
2549(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2550to even) byte length.
2551
7b8d334a 2552=item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
a0d0e21e 2553
e476b1b5 2554(W parenthesis) You said something like
a0d0e21e
LW
2555
2556 my $foo, $bar = @_;
2557
2558when you meant
2559
2560 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2561
54884818 2562Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
a0d0e21e 2563
75b44862 2564=item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
a0d0e21e 2565
be771a83
GS
2566(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2567recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2568you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
a0d0e21e 2569
6df41af2
GS
2570=item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2571
2572(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
fecfaeb8 2573C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
6df41af2
GS
2574
2575=item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2576
2577(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2578
2579 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2580 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2581 LC_ALL = "En_US",
2582 LANG = (unset)
2583 are supported and installed on your system.
2584 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2585
2586Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2587settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
0ea6b70f
JH
2588This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2589system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2590locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2591dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2592Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2593the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2594you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2595L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
6df41af2 2596
ef0f9817
DD
2597=item perlio: unknown layer "%s"
2598
2599(S) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
2600system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
2601internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
2602are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
2603explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
2604value of the environment variable PERLIO.
2605
a0d0e21e
LW
2606=item Permission denied
2607
2608(F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2609
bd3fa61c 2610=item pid %x not a child
748a9306 2611
be771a83
GS
2612(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2613process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2614fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
748a9306 2615
b45f050a
JF
2616=item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes
2617
2618(W unsafe) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2619I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for
2620example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not
2621currently implemented; they are simply placeholders for future
2622extensions and will cause fatal errors.
2623
2624=item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
2625
2626(F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2627beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future
2628extensions. If you need to represent those character sequences inside
2629a regular expression character class, just quote the square brackets
2630with the backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
2631
2632=item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
2633
2634(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2635beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future
2636extensions. If you need to represent those character sequences inside
2637a regular expression character class, just quote the square brackets
2638with the backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
2639
2640=item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown
2641
2642(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. See
2643L<perlre>.
2644
a0d0e21e
LW
2645=item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2646
81777298 2647(F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
a0d0e21e
LW
2648the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2649
bbce6d69 2650=item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
2651
e476b1b5 2652(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
75b44862 2653strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
be771a83
GS
2654literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
2655parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
bbce6d69 2656
774d564b 2657You probably wrote something like this:
2658
54310121 2659 @list = qw(
774d564b 2660 a # a comment
bbce6d69 2661 b # another comment
774d564b 2662 );
bbce6d69 2663
2664when you should have written this:
2665
774d564b 2666 @list = qw(
54310121 2667 a
2668 b
774d564b 2669 );
2670
2671If you really want comments, build your list the
2672old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
2673
2674 @list = (
2675 'a', # a comment
2676 'b', # another comment
2677 );
bbce6d69 2678
2679=item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
2680
be771a83
GS
2681(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
2682commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
2683different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
2684frequently used.)
bbce6d69 2685
54310121 2686You probably wrote something like this:
bbce6d69 2687
774d564b 2688 qw! a, b, c !;
2689
2690which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
2691commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
bbce6d69 2692
774d564b 2693 qw! a b c !;
bbce6d69 2694
a0d0e21e
LW
2695=item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
2696
2697(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
2698Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
2699end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
2700Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
2701
6df41af2
GS
2702=item Possible Y2K bug: %s
2703
2704(W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
2705could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
2706
8cd79558
GS
2707=item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
2708
4375e838 2709(W deprecated) You have written something like this:
8cd79558
GS
2710
2711 sub doit
2712 {
2713 use attrs qw(locked);
2714 }
2715
2716You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
2717
2718 sub doit : locked
2719 {
2720 ...
2721
2722The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
2723backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
2724
a0d0e21e
LW
2725=item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
2726
e476b1b5 2727(S precedence) The old irregular construct
cb1a09d0 2728
a0d0e21e
LW
2729 open FOO || die;
2730
2731is now misinterpreted as
2732
2733 open(FOO || die);
2734
be771a83
GS
2735because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
2736list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
2737parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
2738of "||".
a0d0e21e 2739
3cdd684c
TP
2740=item Premature end of script headers
2741
2742See Server error.
2743
6df41af2
GS
2744=item printf() on closed filehandle %s
2745
be771a83 2746(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 2747before now. Check your control flow.
6df41af2 2748
9a7dcd9c 2749=item print() on closed filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 2750
be771a83 2751(W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 2752before now. Check your control flow.
a0d0e21e 2753
6df41af2 2754=item Process terminated by SIG%s
a0d0e21e 2755
6df41af2
GS
2756(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
2757applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
2758port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
2759L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
fecfaeb8 2760in L<perlos2>.
a0d0e21e 2761
3fe9a6f1 2762=item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4633a7c4 2763
be771a83
GS
2764(S unsafe) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
2765declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4633a7c4 2766
79eeca27 2767=item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d before << HERE in regex m/%s/
9baa0206 2768
b45f050a 2769(F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
79eeca27 2770{min,max} construct. The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where
b45f050a 2771the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
9baa0206 2772
551e1d92 2773=item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression before << HERE %s
9baa0206 2774
b45f050a
JF
2775(W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
2776it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
2777quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
2778"abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
2779C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
9baa0206 2780
89ea2908
GA
2781=item Range iterator outside integer range
2782
2783(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
2784are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
be771a83
GS
2785One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
2786by prepending "0" to your numbers.
89ea2908 2787
9a7dcd9c 2788=item readline() on closed filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 2789
75b44862 2790(W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 2791before now. Check your control flow.
a0d0e21e 2792
6df41af2
GS
2793=item Reallocation too large: %lx
2794
2795(F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
2796
4ad56ec9
IZ
2797=item realloc() of freed memory ignored
2798
be771a83
GS
2799(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
2800already been freed.
4ad56ec9 2801
a0d0e21e
LW
2802=item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
2803
be771a83
GS
2804(F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
2805the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
a0d0e21e
LW
2806which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
2807
3e0ccd42 2808=item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
a0d0e21e
LW
2809
2810(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
2811an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
2812
7a4340ed 2813=item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3e0ccd42 2814
be771a83
GS
2815(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
2816a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
2817hierarchy.
3e0ccd42 2818
1930e939
TP
2819=item Reference found where even-sized list expected
2820
be771a83
GS
2821(W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
2822with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
2823means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
2824parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
7b8d334a
GS
2825
2826 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
2827 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
2828 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
2829 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
2830
810b8aa5
GS
2831=item Reference is already weak
2832
e476b1b5 2833(W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
810b8aa5
GS
2834Doing so has no effect.
2835
a0d0e21e
LW
2836=item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
2837
be771a83
GS
2838(W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
2839a reference count of other than 1.
a0d0e21e 2840
b1866b2d 2841=item Reference to nonexistent group before << HERE in regex m/%s/
b45f050a
JF
2842
2843(F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
2844not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
2845wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
2846prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
9baa0206 2847
79eeca27 2848The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
b45f050a 2849discovered.
9baa0206 2850
a0d0e21e
LW
2851=item regexp memory corruption
2852
2853(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
2854expression compiler gave it.
2855
b45f050a 2856=item Regexp out of space
a0d0e21e 2857
be771a83
GS
2858(P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
2859earlier.
a0d0e21e 2860
7a95317d
GS
2861=item Repeat count in pack overflows
2862
be771a83
GS
2863(F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2864signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
7a95317d
GS
2865
2866=item Repeat count in unpack overflows
2867
be771a83
GS
2868(F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2869signed integers. See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
7a95317d 2870
a0d0e21e
LW
2871=item Reversed %s= operator
2872
be771a83
GS
2873(W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
2874always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
a0d0e21e
LW
2875
2876=item Runaway format
2877
2878(F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
2879produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
2880199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
2881themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
2882shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
2883
2884=item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
2885
be771a83
GS
2886(W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
2887single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
2888value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
2889behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
2890argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
2891and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2892if you're expecting only one subscript.
a0d0e21e 2893
748a9306 2894On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
5f05dabc 2895element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
748a9306
LW
2896Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
2897L<perlref>.
2898
a6006777 2899=item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
2900
75b44862 2901(W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
be771a83
GS
2902element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
2903(indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
2904like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
2905argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
2906and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2907if you're expecting only one subscript.
2908
2909On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
2910as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
2911not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
a6006777 2912L<perlref>.
2913
a0d0e21e
LW
2914=item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
2915
54310121 2916(F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
2917or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
a0d0e21e
LW
2918
2919=item Search pattern not terminated
2920
2921(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
2922construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 2923Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 2924
9ddeeac9 2925=item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
a0d0e21e 2926
be771a83
GS
2927(W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
2928filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e
LW
2929
2930=item select not implemented
2931
2932(F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
2933
ae21d580 2934=item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
68a4a7e4 2935
ae21d580
JH
2936(F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
2937the current implementation.
68a4a7e4 2938
6df41af2 2939=item Semicolon seems to be missing
a0d0e21e 2940
75b44862
GS
2941(W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
2942semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
a0d0e21e
LW
2943
2944=item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
2945
be771a83
GS
2946(S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
2947scalar that had previously been marked as free.
a0d0e21e 2948
6df41af2 2949=item sem%s not implemented
a0d0e21e 2950
6df41af2 2951(F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
a0d0e21e 2952
69282e91 2953=item send() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 2954
be771a83 2955(W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 2956before now. Check your control flow.
a0d0e21e 2957
79eeca27 2958=item Sequence (? incomplete before << HERE mark in regex m/%s/
7b8d334a 2959
79eeca27 2960(F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <<<HERE
b45f050a 2961shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
be771a83 2962L<perlre>.
1b1626e4 2963
551e1d92 2964=item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in %s
b45f050a
JF
2965
2966(F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
2967for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 2968
551e1d92 2969=item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented before << HERE mark in %s
a0d0e21e 2970
b45f050a 2971(F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
79eeca27 2972has not yet been written. The << HERE shows in the regular expression about
b45f050a
JF
2973where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2974
551e1d92 2975=item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized before << HERE mark in %s
a0d0e21e
LW
2976
2977(F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
79eeca27 2978The << HERE shows in the regular expression about
b45f050a 2979where the problem was discovered.
a0d0e21e
LW
2980See L<perlre>.
2981
b45f050a 2982=item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
6df41af2
GS
2983
2984(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
2985parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See L<perlre>.
2986
2987=item 500 Server error
2988
2989See Server error.
2990
a5f75d66
AD
2991=item Server error
2992
3cdd684c 2993This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
be771a83
GS
2994to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
2995varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
2996are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
2997contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
2998produce a valid header".
9607fc9c 2999
3000B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3001
be771a83
GS
3002You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3003user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3004account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3005(like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3006location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3007Please see the following for more information:
9607fc9c 3008
be94a901
GS
3009 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
3010 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
9607fc9c 3011 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/cgi-faq
3012 http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html
3013 http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
a5f75d66 3014
be94a901
GS
3015You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3016
a0d0e21e
LW
3017=item setegid() not implemented
3018
be771a83
GS
3019(F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3020support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3021didn't think so.
a0d0e21e
LW
3022
3023=item seteuid() not implemented
3024
be771a83
GS
3025(F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3026support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3027didn't think so.
a0d0e21e 3028
81777298
GS
3029=item setpgrp can't take arguments
3030
be771a83
GS
3031(F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3032arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3033group ID.
81777298 3034
a0d0e21e
LW
3035=item setrgid() not implemented
3036
be771a83
GS
3037(F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3038support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3039didn't think so.
a0d0e21e
LW
3040
3041=item setruid() not implemented
3042
be771a83
GS
3043(F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3044support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3045didn't think so.
a0d0e21e 3046
6df41af2
GS
3047=item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3048
be771a83
GS
3049(W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3050forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
6df41af2
GS
3051L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3052
a0d0e21e
LW
3053=item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3054
be771a83
GS
3055(F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3056world, because the world might have written on it already.
a0d0e21e
LW
3057
3058=item shm%s not implemented
3059
3060(F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3061
6df41af2
GS
3062=item <> should be quotes
3063
3064(F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3065C<require 'file'>.
3066
3067=item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3068
3069(W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
be771a83
GS
3070as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3071result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3072probably not what you had in mind.
6df41af2 3073
69282e91 3074=item shutdown() on closed socket %s
a0d0e21e 3075
75b44862
GS
3076(W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3077superfluous.
a0d0e21e 3078
f86702cc 3079=item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
a0d0e21e 3080
be771a83
GS
3081(W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3082Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
a0d0e21e
LW
3083
3084=item sort is now a reserved word
3085
3086(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3087But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3088
3089=item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3090
3091(F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
c47ff5f1 3092it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
a0d0e21e
LW
3093See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3094
3095=item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3096
3097(F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3098or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3099
3100=item Split loop
3101
be771a83
GS
3102(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3103iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3104happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
a0d0e21e 3105
a0d0e21e
LW
3106=item Statement unlikely to be reached
3107
be771a83
GS
3108(W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3109die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3110unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3111instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3112a block by itself.
a0d0e21e 3113
9ddeeac9 3114=item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
6df41af2 3115
355b1299
JH
3116(W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3117was either never opened or has since been closed.
6df41af2 3118
7a4340ed 3119=item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading %s
e7ea3e70 3120
be771a83
GS
3121(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3122stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3123C<can> may break this.
e7ea3e70 3124
a0d0e21e
LW
3125=item Subroutine %s redefined
3126
e476b1b5 3127(W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
a0d0e21e
LW
3128
3129 {
4438c4b7 3130 no warnings;
a0d0e21e
LW
3131 eval "sub name { ... }";
3132 }
3133
3134=item Substitution loop
3135
be771a83
GS
3136(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3137shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3138is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
5f05dabc 3139L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
a0d0e21e
LW
3140
3141=item Substitution pattern not terminated
3142
3143(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
3144construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 3145Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e
LW
3146
3147=item Substitution replacement not terminated
3148
3149(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a s/// or s{}{}
3150construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
fb73857a 3151Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e
LW
3152
3153=item substr outside of string
3154
be771a83
GS
3155(W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3156a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3157length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3158substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3159assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
a0d0e21e 3160
f86702cc 3161=item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
a0d0e21e 3162
be771a83
GS
3163(F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3164a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
a0d0e21e 3165
551e1d92 3166=item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches before << HE%s
b45f050a
JF
3167
3168(F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3169branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3170contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3171clustering parentheses:
3172
3173 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3174
79eeca27 3175The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
b45f050a
JF
3176discovered. See L<perlre>.
3177
79eeca27 3178=item Switch condition not recognized before << HERE in regex m/%s/
b45f050a
JF
3179
3180(F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
79eeca27 3181number, it can be only a number. The << HERE shows in the regular expression
b45f050a
JF
3182about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3183
85ab1d1d
JH
3184=item switching effective %s is not implemented
3185
be771a83
GS
3186(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3187and effective uids or gids.
85ab1d1d 3188
a0d0e21e
LW
3189=item syntax error
3190
3191(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3192
3193 A keyword is misspelled.
3194 A semicolon is missing.
3195 A comma is missing.
3196 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3197 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3198 A closing quote is missing.
3199
3200Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3201error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3202The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3203it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
5f05dabc 3204before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
a0d0e21e
LW
3205Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3206the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3207C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
be771a83
GS
3208if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3209questions>.
a0d0e21e 3210
cb1a09d0
AD
3211=item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3212
be771a83
GS
3213(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3214of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3215yourself.
cb1a09d0 3216
6df41af2
GS
3217=item %s syntax OK
3218
3219(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3220
6087ac44 3221=item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
a0d0e21e 3222
6087ac44
JH
3223(F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3224"shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3225machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3226unconfigured. Consult your system support.
a0d0e21e 3227
69282e91 3228=item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 3229
be771a83 3230(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 3231before now. Check your control flow.
a0d0e21e 3232
fc36a67e 3233=item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3234
be771a83
GS
3235(F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3236for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
fc36a67e 3237
9ddeeac9 3238=item tell() on unopened filehandle
a0d0e21e 3239
be771a83
GS
3240(W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3241was either never opened or has since been closed.
a0d0e21e 3242
a0d0e21e
LW
3243=item That use of $[ is unsupported
3244
be771a83
GS
3245(F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3246as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
a0d0e21e
LW
3247
3248 $[ = 0;
3249 $[ = 1;
3250 ...
3251 local $[ = 0;
3252 local $[ = 1;
3253 ...
3254
be771a83
GS
3255This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3256from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
a0d0e21e 3257
f86702cc 3258=item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
a0d0e21e
LW
3259
3260(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3261probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
8b1a09fc 3262think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
a0d0e21e
LW
3263will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3264will deny it.
3265
6df41af2
GS
3266=item The %s function is unimplemented
3267
3268The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3269to the probings of Configure.
3270
5e1c7ca2 3271=item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
a0d0e21e 3272
be771a83
GS
3273(F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3274linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3275past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3276instead.
a0d0e21e 3277
437784d6 3278=item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
f675dbe5
CB
3279
3280=item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3281
75b44862 3282(W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
be771a83
GS
3283element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3284wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3285need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3286F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3287target of the change to
f675dbe5
CB
3288%ENV which produced the warning.
3289
a0d0e21e
LW
3290=item times not implemented
3291
be771a83
GS
3292(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3293suspect you're not running on Unix.
a0d0e21e
LW
3294
3295=item Too few args to syscall
3296
3297(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3298system call to call, silly dilly.
3299
9607fc9c 3300=item Too late for "B<-T>" option
3301
3302(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
8cc95fdb 3303B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3304This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3305script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3306So Perl gives up.
f86702cc 3307
9607fc9c 3308If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
be771a83
GS
3309mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3310editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3311argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
f86702cc 3312
9607fc9c 3313If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3314B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
f86702cc 3315
8cc95fdb 3316=item Too late for "-%s" option
3317
3318(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3319B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3320are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3321
ddda08b7
GS
3322=item Too late to run %s block
3323
3324(W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3325when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
be771a83
GS
3326loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3327instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3328BEGIN block.
ddda08b7 3329
a0d0e21e
LW
3330=item Too many args to syscall
3331
5f05dabc 3332(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
a0d0e21e
LW
3333
3334=item Too many arguments for %s
3335
3336(F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3337
6df41af2
GS
3338=item Too many )'s
3339
be771a83
GS
3340(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3341Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
6df41af2
GS
3342
3343=item Too many ('s
3344
a0d0e21e
LW
3345=item trailing \ in regexp
3346
be771a83
GS
3347(F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3348Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 3349
2c268ad5 3350=item Transliteration pattern not terminated
a0d0e21e
LW
3351
3352(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
fb73857a 3353or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3354C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
a0d0e21e 3355
2c268ad5 3356=item Transliteration replacement not terminated
a0d0e21e
LW
3357
3358(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3359construct.
3360
3361=item truncate not implemented
3362
3363(F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3364Configure knows about.
3365
3366=item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3367
3368(F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
8b1a09fc 3369certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3370%NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
a0d0e21e
LW
3371{EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3372
3373=item umask: argument is missing initial 0
3374
e476b1b5 3375(W umask) A umask of 222 is incorrect. It should be 0222, because octal
eec2d3df
GS
3376literals always start with 0 in Perl, as in C.
3377
3378=item umask not implemented
3379
be771a83
GS
3380(F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3381use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
a0d0e21e 3382
4633a7c4
LW
3383=item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3384
3385(F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3386
a0d0e21e
LW
3387=item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3388
be771a83
GS
3389(W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3390many execution contexts were entered and left.
a0d0e21e
LW
3391
3392=item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3393
be771a83
GS
3394(W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3395many values were temporarily localized.
a0d0e21e
LW
3396
3397=item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3398
be771a83
GS
3399(W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3400many blocks were entered and left.
a0d0e21e
LW
3401
3402=item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3403
be771a83
GS
3404(W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3405many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
a0d0e21e
LW
3406
3407=item Undefined format "%s" called
3408
3409(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3410another package? See L<perlform>.
3411
3412=item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3413
be771a83
GS
3414(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3415Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
a0d0e21e
LW
3416
3417=item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3418
be771a83
GS
3419(F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3420since been undefined.
a0d0e21e
LW
3421
3422=item Undefined subroutine called
3423
3424(F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3425or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3426
3427=item Undefined subroutine in sort
3428
be771a83
GS
3429(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3430to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
a0d0e21e 3431
4633a7c4
LW
3432=item Undefined top format "%s" called
3433
3434(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3435another package? See L<perlform>.
3436
20408e3c
GS
3437=item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3438
be771a83
GS
3439(W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3440C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3441C<undef *foo>.
20408e3c 3442
6df41af2
GS
3443=item %s: Undefined variable
3444
be771a83
GS
3445(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3446Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
6df41af2 3447
a0d0e21e
LW
3448=item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3449
3450(F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3451representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3452
b45f050a 3453
a0d0e21e
LW
3454=item Unknown BYTEORDER
3455
be771a83
GS
3456(F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3457order.
a0d0e21e 3458
79eeca27 3459=item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s before << HERE in regex m/%s/
b45f050a
JF
3460
3461(F) The condition of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct is not
3462known. The condition may be lookaround (the condition is true if the
3463lookaround is true), a (?{...}) construct (the condition is true if the
3464code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the condition is true if the
3465set of capturing parentheses named by the number is defined).
3466
79eeca27 3467The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
b45f050a
JF
3468discovered. See L<perlre>.
3469
6170680b
IZ
3470=item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3471
437784d6 3472(F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
c47ff5f1
GS
3473of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3474C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->.
6170680b 3475
f675dbe5
CB
3476=item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3477
3478(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3479iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3480data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3481subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3482
79eeca27 3483=item unmatched [ before << HERE mark in regex m/%s/
6df41af2 3484
380a0633 3485(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
be771a83 3486include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
79eeca27 3487first. See L<perlre>. The << HERE shows in the regular expression about
380a0633 3488where the escape was discovered.
6df41af2 3489
79eeca27 3490=item unmatched ( in regexp before << HERE mark in regex m/%s/
a0d0e21e
LW
3491
3492(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
be771a83
GS
3493expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
3494matching parenthesis. See L<perlre>.
a0d0e21e 3495
d98d5fff 3496=item Unmatched right %s bracket
a0d0e21e 3497
be771a83
GS
3498(F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
3499ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
3500general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
3501you were last editing.
a0d0e21e 3502
a0d0e21e
LW
3503=item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3504
be771a83
GS
3505(W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
3506reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
3507somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
3508subroutine.
a0d0e21e 3509
54310121 3510=item Unrecognized character %s
a0d0e21e 3511
54310121 3512(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
3513in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
3514script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
a0d0e21e 3515
6df41af2
GS
3516=item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
3517
be771a83
GS
3518(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3519recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
3520understood literally.
6df41af2 3521
79eeca27 3522=item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through before << HERE in m/%s/
6df41af2 3523
be771a83 3524(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
b45f050a
JF
3525recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
3526a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
79eeca27 3527literally. The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where the escape
b45f050a
JF
3528was discovered.
3529
6df41af2 3530
c9f97d15
IZ
3531=item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
3532
be771a83
GS
3533(W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
3534recognized by Perl.
c9f97d15 3535
a0d0e21e
LW
3536=item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
3537
be771a83
GS
3538(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
3539recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
3540on your system.
a0d0e21e 3541
90248788 3542=item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
a0d0e21e 3543
be771a83
GS
3544(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
3545think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
3546bad switch on your behalf.)
a0d0e21e
LW
3547
3548=item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
3549
be771a83
GS
3550(W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
3551operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
3552PROBABLY because you forgot to chop() or chomp() it off. See
3553L<perlfunc/chomp>.
a0d0e21e
LW
3554
3555=item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
3556
3557(F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
3558
6df41af2
GS
3559=item Unsupported function %s
3560
3561(F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
3562At least, Configure doesn't think so.
3563
54310121 3564=item Unsupported function fork
3565
3566(F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
3567
be771a83
GS
3568Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
3569of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
3570changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
54310121 3571
b250498f
GS
3572=item Unsupported script encoding
3573
3574(F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
3575declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot yet read.
3576
a0d0e21e
LW
3577=item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
3578
3579(F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
3580least that's what Configure thought.
3581
6df41af2 3582=item Unterminated attribute list
a0d0e21e 3583
be771a83
GS
3584(F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
3585start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
3586block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
3587attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
a0d0e21e 3588
09bef843
SB
3589=item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
3590
be771a83
GS
3591(F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
3592an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
09bef843
SB
3593character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
3594character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
3595
f1991046
GS
3596=item Unterminated compressed integer
3597
3598(F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
3599compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
3600See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3601
6df41af2 3602=item Unterminated <> operator
09bef843 3603
6df41af2 3604(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
be771a83
GS
3605a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
3606not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
3607earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
09bef843 3608
6df41af2 3609=item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
a0d0e21e 3610
be771a83
GS
3611(W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
3612still valid when C<untie> was called.
a0d0e21e 3613
6df41af2 3614=item Useless use of %s in void context
a0d0e21e 3615
75b44862 3616(W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
be771a83
GS
3617nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
3618value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
3619often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
3620to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
3621get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
3622said
a0d0e21e 3623
6df41af2 3624 $one, $two = 1, 2;
748a9306 3625
6df41af2
GS
3626when you meant to say
3627
3628 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
3629
3630Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
3631reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
3632example, if you say
3633
3634 $array = (1,2);
3635
3636when you should have said
3637
3638 $array = [1,2];
3639
3640The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
3641while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
3642a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
3643throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
3644L<perlref> for more on this.
3645
3646=item Useless use of "re" pragma
3647
3648(W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
3649
3650=item "use" not allowed in expression
3651
be771a83
GS
3652(F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3653returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
748a9306 3654
c47ff5f1 3655=item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4633a7c4 3656
be771a83
GS
3657(D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
3658if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4633a7c4 3659
a0d0e21e
LW
3660=item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
3661
be771a83
GS
3662(D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
3663a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
3664of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
a0d0e21e 3665
dc848c6f 3666=item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
3667
be771a83
GS
3668(D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
3669are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
3670subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
3671C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
3672$obj->bar() >>).
dc848c6f 3673
be771a83
GS
3674This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
3675methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
3676code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
3677currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
3678C<AUTOLOAD>s.
dc848c6f 3679
3680The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
be771a83
GS
3681non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
3682to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
3683named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
3684startup.
dc848c6f 3685
be771a83
GS
3686In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
3687you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
7b8d334a 3688C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
fb73857a 3689
6df41af2
GS
3690=item Use of %s in printf format not supported
3691
3692(F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
3693only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
3694
3695=item Use of $* is deprecated
3696
be771a83
GS
3697(D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
3698matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
3699to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
3700that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
6df41af2
GS
3701
3702=item Use of %s is deprecated
3703
75b44862 3704(D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
be771a83
GS
3705generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
3706old way has bad side effects.
6df41af2
GS
3707
3708=item Use of $# is deprecated
3709
be771a83
GS
3710(D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
3711defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
6df41af2 3712
d804643f
SC
3713=item Use of reference "%s" in array index
3714
3715(W) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
3716isn't what you mean, because references tend to be huge numbers which
3717take you out of memory, and so usually indicates programmer error.
3718
3719If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
3720C<$array[0+$ref]>
3721
85b81015
LW
3722=item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
3723
be771a83
GS
3724(D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
3725versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
3726explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
3727use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
3728suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
3729a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
85b81015 3730
cc95b072 3731=item Use of uninitialized value%s
a0d0e21e 3732
be771a83
GS
3733(W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
3734defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
3735To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
a0d0e21e 3736
e5be4a53
GS
3737To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
3738you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
3739program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
3740appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
3741usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
3742the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
3743program.
3744
68dc0745 3745=item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
a6006777 3746
75b44862 3747(W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
be771a83
GS
3748C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
3749can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
3750false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
3751constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
3752C<defined> operator.
a6006777 3753
f675dbe5
CB
3754=item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
3755
be771a83
GS
3756(W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
3757%ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
3758longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
37591024 characters.
f675dbe5 3760
9607fc9c 3761=item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4633a7c4 3762
be771a83
GS
3763(F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
3764you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
3765something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
3766that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
3767front of your variable.
4633a7c4 3768
6df41af2
GS
3769=item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
3770
be771a83
GS
3771(W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
3772scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
3773instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
3774earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
3775all closure referents to it are destroyed.
6df41af2 3776
44a8e56a 3777=item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
3778
be771a83
GS
3779(W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
3780I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
3781anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
3782defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
44a8e56a 3783
3784 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
3785
3786If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
be771a83
GS
3787indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
3788you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
3789referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
3790value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
3791call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
3792
3793In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
3794anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
3795shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
3796between interferes with this feature.
44a8e56a 3797
6df41af2
GS
3798=item Variable syntax
3799
3800(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
3801of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
3802Perl yourself.
3803
44a8e56a 3804=item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
3805
be771a83
GS
3806(W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
3807lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
44a8e56a 3808
3809When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
be771a83
GS
3810the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
3811call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
3812outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
3813longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
3814variable will no longer be shared.
44a8e56a 3815
3816Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
3817lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
3818will I<never> share the given variable.
3819
3820This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
3821anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
be771a83
GS
3822reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
3823are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
44a8e56a 3824
551e1d92 3825=item Variable length lookbehind not implemented before << HERE in %s
b45f050a
JF
3826
3827(F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
79eeca27 3828known at compile time. The << HERE shows in the regular expression about where
b45f050a
JF
3829the problem was discovered.
3830
084610c0
GS
3831=item Version number must be a constant number
3832
3833(P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
3834its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
3835the version number.
3836
7e1af8bc 3837=item Warning: something's wrong
5f05dabc 3838
3839(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
3840you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
3841
f86702cc 3842=item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
a0d0e21e 3843
be771a83
GS
3844(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
3845the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
3846space.
a0d0e21e 3847
5f05dabc 3848=item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
a0d0e21e 3849
be771a83
GS
3850(S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
3851looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
3852term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
3853function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
a0d0e21e
LW
3854
3855 rand + 5;
3856
3857you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
3858
3859 rand() + 5;
3860
3861but in actual fact, you got
3862
3863 rand(+5);
3864
5f05dabc 3865So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
a0d0e21e 3866
4b3603a4
JH
3867=item Wide character in %s
3868
3869(F) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting one.
3870
9a7dcd9c 3871=item write() on closed filehandle %s
a0d0e21e 3872
be771a83 3873(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
c289d2f7 3874before now. Check your control flow.
a0d0e21e
LW
3875
3876=item X outside of string
3877
3878(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position before
3879the beginning of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3880
3881=item x outside of string
3882
3883(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
3884the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3885
3886=item Xsub "%s" called in sort
3887
be771a83
GS
3888(F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
3889supported.
a0d0e21e
LW
3890
3891=item Xsub called in sort
3892
be771a83
GS
3893(F) The use of an external subroutine as a sort comparison is not yet
3894supported.
a0d0e21e
LW
3895
3896=item You can't use C<-l> on a filehandle
3897
be771a83
GS
3898(F) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
3899it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
a0d0e21e
LW
3900Use a filename instead.
3901
3902=item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
3903
5f05dabc 3904(F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
a0d0e21e 3905sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
be771a83
GS
3906about what you want. Your best bet is to use the wrapsuid script in the
3907eg directory to put a setuid C wrapper around your script.
a0d0e21e
LW
3908
3909=item You need to quote "%s"
3910
be771a83
GS
3911(W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
3912Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
3913which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
3914assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
3915what you want, put an & in front.)
a0d0e21e 3916
a0d0e21e
LW
3917=back
3918
56e90b21 3919=cut